WiredCrusader's Blog

2005-05-27T15:01:00.000-04:00

American English
I thought this was cool, and decided to post it on the blog.

MY Linguistic Profile:

60% General American English

15% Upper Midwestern

10% Dixie

10% Yankee

5% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

2005-04-06T18:50:00.000-04:00

You're FIRED, Cookie Monster!

Children's Television Workshop, the creators of Sesame Street, have apparently adopted the Leftist conception that parents can no longer be expected to ensure their children eat a healthy diet. As a result, they're putting Cookie Monster on a diet. According to the Hartford Courant- there will be No more cookies on Sesame Street.

Bad news for Cookie Monster - the focus of the 36th Sesame Street season, which starts this week, is healthful eating habits.

Although there are no plans to turn the lovable, cookie-chomping blue Muppet into Cauliflower Monster, the oversized, letter-of-the-day cookie he chomped down in yesterday's season premiere would likely be one of his last.

Joining the battle against childhood obesity, the season-long theme of "Healthy Habits for Life" is clear from the jump-roping that started the episode to the longer-than-usual segment called "The Healthy Foods Name Game," in which Elmo and Zoe scoured the neighborhood for colorful vegetables to complete a puzzle. [Yawn! -Darius]

This is just another example of a trend in moving the burden for diet away from the individual and to the community-at-large.

What in the HELL are they going to do with Cookie Monster? If he can't eat cookies anymore, what the hell is he going to eat? Maybe he'll eat cucumbers. He can be the Cucumber Monster.

2005-04-02T22:08:00.000-05:00

General Thoughts and Musings

My Catholic Upbringing

I was subject to Catholic indoctrination from a very early age, but it never took firm root in me. I resented having the religion pushed on me by my family, and as I studied the Bible I found things which seemed contradictory and which certainly seemed to contradict the trappings of organized religion in general. I could get into specifics, I thought about it as I began to write this, but I'm not that interested.

I was born a Catholic. My dad split when I was young, and my mom had the marriage annulled. According to the Catholic church, my parents had never been married, but I was recognized as a non-bastard. As I grew up, I contemplated this and there was always a seed of resentment against the parties involved- my parents and the Catholic church, but I was always a good Catholic.

I was baptized in St. Andrews Cathedral in Victoria, BC when I was about a week old. My moms family was Catholic via both her parents; her parents were English/Irish (grandfather) and Polish (grandmother). I really have no idea what my fathers religious background is, as I know almost nothing about him.

I went to church every Sunday. I prayed the rosary devoutly. I prayed to the Virgin Mary. I prayed for Reagan and the Pope after their assassination attempts (Strange that two of the men most responsible for the end of the cold war would survive attempts on their lives within a few years of each other), and then eventually die in such a close range.

I went to Catholic gradeschool and middleschool (St. Angela's Roseville, MI), Catholic highschool (Notre Dame Highschool Harper Woods, MI) and a Catholic university (University of Detroit Detroit, MI).

I was a public speaker at 13 years old. I became a lector, one of a small group of ten, who read the first and second readings, sometimes the psalms, and who led the general intercessions. This was a role always reserved for adults, but I was a good speaker so I somehow was allowed this prominent role in my parish.

From 13 years old, until I was 20, I participated in the mass almost weekly in front of crowds averaging 300 people- and surging to over 1000 on major holidays.

I saw the Pope when he visited Detroit in 1987. There were over 100,000 people packed into the Pontiac Silverdome for a mess he performed; I think it broke a record for indoor mass, but I'm not sure if it still holds it.

As I grew older, I didn't feel at home as a Catholic. After we moved away from the church I grew up attending, I stopped going to church regularly. I went less and less, until I just stopped going at all.

I met my wife at the end of 1999, although since we met online, we didn't meet until a few months later. We didn't date long before we were engaged. Although we planned to have a quick wedding in Vegas, my mother insisted we have a local wedding- and she volunteered to pay for almost everything. We consented.

We made arrangements to meet with the new rector at my old childhood church. We met with him, and he was a dick. He gave us a hard time about Windy having been married before; she had gotten married at 18 and then quickly divorced after her husband started cheating on her and beating her. These circumstances didn't seem to register with the priest and he insisted she begin a long drawn-out Catholic annullment process, even though she wasn't Catholic at all. He was not understanding in the least, and he made my wife cry. That day, I vowed to sever all ties with my former church.

We went looking for somewhere else to get married, and someone to marry us who would show a little compassion if told that my wife had been abused in her first marriage. To our luck, we found a small liberal Christian church where the pastor was- surprisingly- an ex-Catholic nun. We were grateful that she married us, and honestly, she was a G-dsend.

Pope John Paul II

When I was a kid, I prayed for the Pope after he had been shot, even though I didn't really understand who he was. I learned more about him after I entered gradeschool.

I loved comic books. When I was in second or third grade, my school had a bookfair and after mass one sunday- my mom took me to pick out a book. I zeroed in on the one comic book I found- which was a comic biography on the life of Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II. This comic book taught be a lot about the man, and indeed- these seem to me a particularly good tool for teaching children. Karol lived a hard life. What I remember most- without resorting to further research to augment what rolls off my memory- was that he and his family (and the Poles in general) suffered greatly under the Nazi scourge, and then even more after the bootheel of Soviet Communism was firmly in place on the necks of all Poles. What spoke volumes about his character was how he forgave the man who tried to kill him- the young Turk who shot him in 1981. He visited with him after he was able to travel away from his hospital bed. He forgave him for the murder attempt. That's the intensity of compassion and forgiveness which dominated his reign as Pope John Paul II.

He made some choices which I disagree with, but I don't know of a religious leader who I could really throw my full support behind, so I'll set aside any disagreements and focus on my respect for the man now that he's passed. He was a good man, always working towards maximizing life and minimizing death. He was an idealist but not an absolutist- he was able to work towards a great reconciliation with the other religions of the world- meeting with Jewish and Moslem leaders in the Holy Land, and receiving the Dalai Lama at the Vatican. Additionally, he met with world leaders and chastised them where he felt he needed to- Mikhail Gorbachev, Vladimir Putin, and Fidel Castro, to name a few- over matters generally concerning human rights.

I think one his greatest legacies is the role he played in destroying the sphere of Soviet Communism. He helped strengthen the Solidarity movement when he visted Lech Walesa in 1983, and this enabled Walesa to strengthen the movement by garnering the support of hundreds of thousands of people who probably wouldn't have had the courage to join the movement if it hadn't been for John Paul II. This led to a snowballing movement in Poland which created a popular movement to rival the controls imposed by the Communist government. Afterwards, others struggling under the bootheel of Communism looked at Poland with envy, and their desire to emulate the Poles forced the other Communist leaders to increase popular freedoms.

He was a great leader, and he will be missed by millions. Even though I personally disagree with many of his strictures, and even though I've distanced myself from my Catholic roots, I'll miss him too.

2005-03-31T08:28:00.000-05:00

Hero of the Day

I really like Boy George. I liked his music, back in the day, and I was happy to come across this article from This is London while surfing the net this morning.

Who would have thought he would be such an upstanding rock of ethics?

Read the article for details, but I like a guy who sticks to a strong code of personal ethics- especially if they live a life outside the mainstream and still espouse a strong ethical code.

2005-03-16T18:37:00.000-05:00

Automotive Sales Outlook = Bad

This should not be a big surprise.

Since 9/11, the worlds automotive manufacturers have made great efforts to push their brands. Led by GM, most automakers have offered big incentives to car buyers, and those that have saw their sales figures for fiscal years '02 through '04 increase drastically.

Here's what happened...

Everyone that wanted a car had the opportunity to buy one. Car prices were so favorable- even if people were going to put off buying for a few years- they brought a car. During this period- the Big 3 US auto makers sold to everyone they could, but they were still unable to shake quality concerns from some buyers. Some people chose Asian and European cars, and those companies were able to sell despite having the favorable incentives of US automakers.

For now, the US car market for US produced cars has dried up. There's still a market for foreign cars, but those foreign manufacturers will also have to deal with a market flooded with cars sold in the past 3 years.

The used car market will be great for a few years. With all the leases the US car companies will have to buy back, everyone will be able to get cheap used cars for a while...

2005-03-14T12:14:00.000-05:00

Axe Control?

British Members of Parliament were last rumored to be in closed-session debates regarding the merits of proposed "Axe Control Legislation" in response to this crime.

2005-03-11T11:17:00.000-05:00

The Iron Cookie is Crumbling

Read this story.

How fucked up is your country if young girls would gladly give up their ass to the lowest Chinese border guard in order to escape?

How fucked up is your system if China looks like a free-market paradise in comparison?

The executed 60 people for trying to escape, and having a cellphone is a crime?

Kim Jong Il is so oppressive, he makes me want to say

"1984년에 환영!"

2005-03-09T13:24:00.000-05:00

One Child's Sad Situation

This is incredibly sad.

A two year old toddler was under the care of a family friend, on a semi-permanent basis after his mother went to prison. The 64 year old caretaker in Houston, Texas, was last heard from last Friday, and died over the weekend.

For at least two days, the 2 year old boy was left alone with the corpse of his deceased caretaker. The poor boy managed to find some food in the form of pancake syrup and onions, before one of the caretakers relatives came looking for the woman.

As a father of two, I can attest that this is one of the saddest things I have ever heard in my life. This is the kind of story you read about in fiction, or see in a movie... this is shockingly depressing.

G-d bless this boy, and may he be guided on a path to true happiness in his life.

2005-02-09T10:46:00.000-05:00

Good Lord, Where Has the Time Gone?

For the past three months, I'd been working on a project to move my employers IT infrastructure, serving as the project manager. My biggest challenge has been keeping one office open and serving as the IT Manager, while doing an entire additional job... focusing on keeping the employees in the old office happy, and making sure they stay happy at their new home. It has been so time consuming and draining that I have not had the energy to do much else besides work and tend to my family. Well, the project is over now- and it was very successful- and I'm finding myself with a teensy-bit more free time.

Hopefully, I can get the ball rolling and get posting again at my usual pace.

For now, most- if not all- of my blogging will be focused on the File It Under... blog, which is a group blog started by J.D. Hoodlumman, which also features pieces from Tom and Rob B. I met these guys at the TerrorXChange, which is currently in a statis, and we all started blogging about the same time. They've been gracious enough to accept me as the newest member of their team blog, and I hope that I can provide File It Under... with quality commentary and observations.

Check out the blog. It's good stuff.

2004-12-19T11:13:00.000-05:00

al Qaeda Begins to Incite Shiite Violence in Anticipation of Next Months Elections

Car bomb blast during a funeral ceremony Sunday in the Shiite holy city of Najaf killed 30 people and injured 65.

Twelve people were killed when a car bomb exploded at a bus station in the Iraqi Shiite shrine city of Kerbala.

2004-12-17T11:03:00.000-05:00

Terrorist Smugglers Die in Gaza

Sucks to be these terrorists.

If I were the Israelis, I would seriously consider the option of detonating ground penetrating explosives in this region at random times- just to ensure the Palestinians reap lots of grief in their tunnel making and smuggling operations.

The IDF could use techniques used to detect and seal abandoned mines, and employ the same strategy to devestate the underground tunnels being dug by the Palestinians.

2004-12-17T09:38:00.000-05:00

No Big Surprise: Osama is a Hypocrite

Much news has been made of the latest Osama bin Laden audio-tape to hit the news. As usual, his message is a parody of logic which will no doubt solicit a multitude of responses from those who hear it.

The entire tape is filled with laughable garbage, but I'd like to pick the most hypocritical snippets to ridicule here, after which I will comment on the fall-out al Qaeda is guaranteed to reap from this latest threat.

Mr. bin Laden said the Saudi regime "practised injustices against the people, violating their rights, humiliating their rights" and wasted public money while millions of Saudis lived in poverty.
No doubt Osama had justice and human rights on his mind everytime he ordered civilians killed, whether in Africa in 1998 or in New York in 2001.
"When nations move to demand their rights, security forces cannot stop them," he said. "And you should never forget the fate of the shah of Iran, who fell despite the strength and experience of his security forces.

"The people have awoken from their stupor; they realized the degree of corruption and tyranny that you use to rob them of their rights. Muslims in the country of the two holy mosques insist on regaining their rights at any cost."
What an interesting bunch of comments to make given the failures of al Qaeda in bloodying the infidel in Iraq. It's no wonder that he's focusing again on the Saudi leadership, because he's realizing that even in Iraq he's unable to shed an amount of blood he feels comfortable with.

In addition, I'm sure he's surprised by the fact that so few Iraqis have been willing to welcome al Zarqawi's murderers with open arms. Even in Iraq, a majority of Iraqis prefer the temporary presence of US forces than the permanent presence of Sunni murderers.
In an ominous threat, Mr. bin Laden urged his fighters to target oil sites not only in Iraq, where insurgents have been blowing up pipelines and installations, but also in the Persian Gulf states.

"Take jihad [holy war] to stop [the Americans] getting hold of [the oil]. Concentrate your operations on the oil, in particular in Iraq and the gulf," he said.
This last snippet is of particular interest to me, and I'm sure most of the world.

Here Osama calls for his supporters to destroy their wealth in order to spite his enemies, particularly the US. What Osama clearly doesn't realize is that the more he threatens the world oil market, the more he threatens the very value of his treasured resource.

Let me explain...

It has been very easy for certain countries to overlook the hostile actions of al Qaeda. Countries dependent on oil importation, but who have not been threatened by al Qaeda have now directly been threatened.

Countries such as China, India, France, Germany, and Japan- which have been virtually ignored by Osama bin Laden (with obvious exceptions for Xinjiang and Kashmir)- now have more than enough reason to hate him. As he threatens their ability to import cheap oil from a calmer oil market, they will begin to cooperate more fully with US efforts to destroy al Qaeda and radical Islamic terrorism.

China, in particular, will feel the pain from rising oil prices because of Osama's threat. China has the most to lose from higher energy costs. As they prepare for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and as their economy continues to grow at a record pace- any supply problems could destroy their growth and prosperity. They will be much more willing to tolerate American internationalism as Bush focuses on destroying al Qaeda.

Environmentalists too have a reason to fear and hate Osama bin Laden. The publics ability to tolerate environmental Leftism is based entirely on cheap energy. As energy costs soar, the publics demand for energy increases- and consequently, the support for controversial topics like drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve and beneath National Parks, increases proportionately. (Billionaire Greenie contributors can't really contribute to their pet environmentalist projects if their billions are threatened.)

In researching this post, I came across a US government commisioned economic analysis on high oil prices which you may be interested in reading.

2004-12-16T09:06:00.000-05:00

"Satire" at the University of Wisconsin

A scenario...

An Angry college Republican writes a satirical column in a campus newspaper. Purportedly a letter to himself, he talks about his grief and his desire to key the cars of campus administrators, and go on a killing spree. He writes, "if you kill 15 or 16 of them [campus administrators] you'd be a hero."

What do you think the University Administration would do to the College Republican?

Immediate expulsion? ...Definitely.

An Immediate Apology from the student newspaper that published his rant? ...Definitely.

Would there be focus groups and orders for cultural sensitivity classes, or anger management sessions, or free grief counseling for the faculty who he threatened with his questionable satire? ...Definitely.

That's what would happen to a college Republican who wrote, jokingly, about killing faculty members.

Now imagine what would happen if the situation was reversed 180 degrees...

Well, we don't have to imagine, because this is exactly what happened at the University of Wisconsin. Professor Pat Rothfuss wrote a "satirical" piece outlining ideas about attacking and killing Republicans, and vandalizing their cars.

Was HE punished at all for his vitriol? NO! The University of Wisconsin did NOTHING!

Double Standard? HELL YES! You can't doubt AT ALL that a College Republican would receive the same protection that this professor received in spouting his derision and hatred, and frankly- had it been a right-leaning professor talking about killing Democrats, you could be SURE that he would have been on the STREET within days of the columns printing.

Here are some snippets from the Professors hateful "satire," which was supposed to have been written while he was drunk...

"punching smug-looking Republicans in the mouth"

"key every car you see with a Bush bumper sticker."

"why don't you go on a killing spree? I pet you can take out fixteen for sisteen republicans beofre they gun you down. Duke, youd' be like a heroe."

This guy needs to be purged from the faculty of the University of Wisconsin.

2004-12-15T10:01:00.000-05:00

Important Do Not Call Info

My company sent out this info, who knows who they plagiarized it from, but here it is.

Starting Jan 1, 2005, all cell phone numbers will be made public to telemarketing firms. So this means as of Jan 1, your cell phone may start ringing off the hook with telemarketers, but unlike your home phone, most of you pay for your incoming calls. These telemarketers will eat up your free minutes and end up costing you money in the long run.

According to the National Do Not Call List, you have until Dec. 15th 2004 to get on the national "Do not call list" for cell phones. They said that you need to call 1-888-382-1222 from the cell phone that you wish to have put on the "do not call list" to be put on the list. They also said you can do it online at www.donotcall.gov.

Registering only takes a minute, is in effect for 5 years and will possibly save you money (definitely frustration)! Make sure you register now!

I hate telemarketers, and am trying to ensure that this info gets as widespread as possible.

2004-12-14T16:00:00.000-05:00

While Chasing Down al Zarqawi, We Nail His Lieutenant

Good news. Iraqi police have shot and killed Zarqawi Lieutenant Hassan Ibrahim Farhan. Good job guys!

2004-12-13T14:50:00.000-05:00

Threats

Sadly, it really wouldn't take very much effort to undo all that the United States has done in Iraq. With its 3 disparate groups of Kurds and Sunni or Shiite Arabs- all with different religious variations of Islam, and ancient histories of rivalry and mistrust- it would take very little to launch them into open hostility.

German daily Tagesspiegel is reporting that "Al Qaeda in Iraq" terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is planning a terrorist strike purported to be "bigger than 9/11."

Iraq-based al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Mussab al- Zarkawi is planning a terror strike of greater magnitude than the 11 September 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, according to a German newspaper report published on Monday.

The daily Tagesspiegel in Berlin quotes a follower of al-Zarkawi as saying the Jordanian radical, who is believed to be behind many of the kidnappings and attacks in Iraq, had told him there would be "a really big event" soon.

According to the follower, named as Fathala F., al-Zarkawi had told him the attack would be bigger than the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Given the intra-Iraq ethnic and religious chaos, we already know that al Zarqawi's Sunni forces have no qualms about killing Shiites in an attempt to create a broader conflict between the Sunnis and dominant Shiites. If such a conflict were to develop, it would almost certainly require a much larger force deployment than the US can currently muster- if we wanted to keep a relative peace.

Last month, when US forces decimated the terrorist forces in Fallujah, we discovered that Zarqawi had created chemical weapons labs and had begun to manufacture toxins.

If Zarqawi has any tactical merit, common sense, and rationale- he must know that he cannot hope to continue to fight both the coalition and Iraqi forces forever; any stand they make is doomed to fail, so he has to result to high impact bombings that pose little risk to his forces.

My fear is that up to 2 weeks before the elections, he may launch a chemical attack against a Shiite target in Southern or Central Iraq. It may be possible for Shiite leaders to calm their people, but it would likely take more than a few days for peace to reign. If the attack takes place, it could force the election to be delayed, or trigger a civil war.

2004-12-07T10:01:00.000-05:00

Monster Thickburger

Hardee's is doing a good job of giving people what they want, and as a result- they'll make a lot of money.

Of course, no good deed goes unpunished- and the Health Nazis have launched a crusade against the Monster Thickburger.

I just wrote the Health Nazis this letter...

While reading a story about the Hardee's Monster Thickburger on the WWW atYahoo! News, I read that your organization released the following statement...

"The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based advocate for nutrition and health, dubbed the Thickburgers "food porn," the Monster "the fast-food equivalent of a snuff film."

"At a time of rampant heart disease and obesity, it is the height of corporate irresponsibility for a major chain to peddle a 1,420-calorie sandwich," the center said."

I wanted to respond to your organization with my own Monster-Thick FUCK YOU!

How dare you presume to judge Hardee's for giving consumers what they want? The object of the market is to provide for people who want to obtain goods, and if someone wants to buy a hamburger- let them. If it was up to your organization, no doubt we'd all be eating light cottage cheese and salads, exclusively.

Your lobbyists pressure politicians and businesses to restrict products offered to consumers, and your lawyers sue fast food restaurants with fraudulent lawsuits- all in an attempt to limit choices.

You make it clear that you feel ordinary people are too stupid to make decisions for themselves, and that is a most reprehensible and arrogant presumption. The more you struggle in your crusade to force "healthy"-foods down all our throats, the less average people will tolerate your preaching.

May your folly bankrupt your organization.

Sincerely,

Darius J. Thomson

Fuck the Health Nazis. I say, "Let the people eat a fucking hamburger."

2004-12-03T23:39:00.000-05:00

Good Lord! Deja Vu...

Powerline Blogged this mere hours after I did, I find myself in good company with some great parallel thinkers. :-)

Suspicion

I'm a long way from being a conspiracy buff, but what's the deal with the price of oil?

Last spring, it was reported that the Saudis had assured the administration that they would take action to reduce the price of oil. Bob Woodward reported that there was a secret deal between the Saudis and the Bush administration, which John Kerry denounced as "outrageous and unacceptable to the American people." The press made some efforts to promote this as a mini-scandal, but it faded quickly--mostly, I think, because the Democrats quickly realized that if President Bush could keep the price of oil down, it was a selling point, not a scandal.

I didn't remember this part of the story until I went back and read some of the news stories from last spring:

In a morning briefing with reporters, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Saudi Arabia recently "committed to making sure prices remained in a range of, I believe, $22 to $28" per barrel.

That, of course, isn't what happened.

Wow, I guess I was prescient.

2004-12-03T16:16:00.000-05:00

You Just Can't Make This Stuff Up, Can You?

Wow, this is some funny stuff; it's gotta be fiction- right?

Twenty John Kerry supporters met for their first group therapy session in South Florida Thursday, screaming epithets at President Bush as they shared their emotions with licensed mental health counselors.

The first of several free noontime therapy sessions at the American Health Association in Boca Raton was designed to treat what mental health counselors have dubbed Post election Selection Trauma (PEST).

“It’s no joke. People with PEST were traumatized by the election. If you even mention religion, their faces turn blister-red as they shout at Bush.”

“More than anything else, people with PEST tremble physically.” Gordon said the Kerry supporters in therapy are predominantly Jewish and older than 50. Most are registered independents and all live in Palm Beach County.

“There’s an overall sense of emotional helplessness and abandonment,” said Sheila Cooperman, a licensed AHA psychotherapist from Delray Beach. “In psychology, we call it ‘learned helplessness.’ After you zap a caged dog twice, he stops moving because he knows there is no place to go. That’s what happened with these Kerry voters. They’ve been zapped so many times that they’re on the verge of giving up on politics.”

Cooperman, also a practicing psychic, added, “One person today said he thinks the country is now run by fascists. Another felt personally threatened by the president’s love for big business. Many believe Bush is going to draft their grandchildren.

Is this a joke, or are these people really THAT crazy over their candidates loss? What a farce!

(Hat Tip...)

2004-12-03T10:49:00.000-05:00

Thoughts on the Economy

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I sincerely believe that the Saudis hate president Bush, and that they've been working for at least a year to hurt US economic growth. They worked nil to increase oil production even in the face of artificially high $50/barrel prices, and they ignored US pleas to increase production... until after the election was over.

As soon as President Bush was reelected, they began to pledge higher production and output, and since they did- the price of oil has dropped considerably.

This is good news for President Bush, cheaper oil equates to short-term economic gains for the US manufacturing sector. Coupled with the deflation of the US dollar, US exports should gain significantly as foreign buyers are forced to consider purchasing US goods. This will help us close-the-gap on our trade deficit and hopefully will spur more foreign investment in US industries.

Bush should reap the benefits of a growing economy in his second term. There are very few dark spots on the horizon, most notably- the economic stability of the federally subsidized Fannie and Freddie.

2004-12-02T09:38:00.001-05:00

Introspection Needed at the DNC

I vote Republican, but I am VERY Liberal when it comes to social issues; I'm a big Gay rights supporter, womens right supporter and a supporter of Affirmative Action (but as mentioned in previous posts, my feelings for these issues generally don't mirror "the Left").

I have a lot of sympathy for the Democratic party, and if they changed their tune on some issues- and stopped their whining and Bush-bashing- I could easily be persuaded to vote for their candidates.

I read a terrific post at Instapundit which details the fundamental reason the Democrats lost the '04 Presidential Election; the Instapundit post is based on this post from the New Republic . They ignored the elephant in the room and never developed a national strategy (as a party) to deal with this emerging threat.

" Liberals, they argued, "consistently avoided the great political reality of the present..." Unless that changed, "In the spasm of terror which will seize this country ... it is the right--the very extreme right--which is most likely to gain victory."

This quote actually comes from an article written in 1947, and the great threat isn't Islamic Fundamentalism, but rather Soviet Communism...

Today, three years after September 11 brought the United States face-to-face with a new totalitarian threat, liberalism has still not "been fundamentally reshaped" by the experience. On the right, a "historical re-education" has indeed occurred--replacing the isolationism of the Gingrich Congress with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's near-theological faith in the transformative capacity of U.S. military might. But American liberalism, as defined by its activist organizations, remains largely what it was in the 1990s--a collection of domestic interests and concerns. On health care, gay rights, and the environment, there is a positive vision, articulated with passion. But there is little liberal passion to win the struggle against Al Qaeda--even though totalitarian Islam has killed thousands of Americans and aims to kill millions; and even though, if it gained power, its efforts to force every aspect of life into conformity with a barbaric interpretation of Islam would reign terror upon women, religious minorities, and anyone in the Muslim world with a thirst for modernity or freedom.

Bravo!

If the threat were really taken seriously by the Democrats in this country, you would see them QUICKLY abandon Leftist icons- like Michael Moore- who turn a blind eye to the sins of Islamic Fundamentalism, but instead blindly attack President Bush.

2004-12-02T09:38:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the Absence

It's been one of the most stressful weeks of my life, but I think the stress is rolling to a close.

My son, who has a congenital problem with his ears retaining fluid- just like his sister- has had ear infections almost constantly since he was born in March. This has led to chronic discomfort and restlessness. During the day it's not too bad, he's still a happy kid... but at night- he turns into the Boy Who Will Not Sleep.

The Boy Who Will Not Sleep has been keeping me awake and sluggish and has sapped me of my energy this past week while he battled his latest ear infection.

My wife took him to the doctor on Tuesday, and finally- FINALLY- he has been scheduled to undergo a procedure next week to have ear tubes implanted to help the fluid drain.

That, in addition to lots of nasty viruses and crashed systems at work, and other side-jobs I've been working on- like setting up my 2 year old daughters first computer- have kept me too busy to blog. I hope that will change now, and I hope to be blogging a lot.

2004-11-23T21:54:00.000-05:00

My Kind of Justice!

Cheers to Robert O'Neal who did what any concerned parent would have done!

TRENTON - Minutes after four young men robbed a Hiltonia resident of $1,500 cash Sunday night and threatened to rape his teenage daughters, one of the suspects lay dead under the victim's sport utility vehicle on nearby Route 29.

The unidentified young man was killed after he jumped from his car and began shooting at the SUV driven by Robert O'Neal, 54, who had given chase.

O'Neal ran him over, police said.

This goes to show you that just because you don't have a gun to defend yourself with, you can make use of other handy items- like your car or SUV. Nothing deters crime like lethal force.

2004-11-23T21:18:00.000-05:00

US Should Withhold Its UN Dues Until Kofi Annan Quits

It's widely known that the Leftist BBC News is no friend of the US, but it did air this report exposing the blatant scandal over the Oil-for-Vetoes debacle.

Saddam Hussein's Iraq made more than $21bn (£11.3bn) from illicit oil sales and kickbacks in breach of UN sanctions, the US Senate has heard.

$4.4bn was earned through kickbacks on humanitarian goods supplied through the UN's oil-for-food (OFF) programme, they said. [How many Iraqis did Saddam kill by failing to comply with the orders to openly disarm? How many did he kill by perverting the Oil-for-Food program and building palaces while his people starved? -Darius]

...Firms, government ministers and senior UN officials benefited from the corruption.

Among them are the former head of the oil-for-food programme, Benon Sevan, and a number of French politicians and companies. They have denied the allegations.

The huge sums raised from smuggling saw neighbouring countries including Syria, Jordan and Turkey conclude secret deals - called protocols - to import large quantities of oil, the investigators said.

The huge sums raised from smuggling saw neighbouring countries including Syria, Jordan and Turkey conclude secret deals - called protocols - to import large quantities of oil, the investigators said.

Charles Duelfer
Charles Duelfer's team published a 1,000-page report in October
But other oil revenue came from selling certificates allowing the holder to sell on oil rights and charge a per-barrel commission on them.

Some of these certificates, the investigators said, went to groups such as the Mojahideen-e-Khalq, a group aiming to overthrow neighbouring Iran, and to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Others went to journalists or foreign officials [read: FRENCH and RUSSIAN], the investigators said.

The system was corrupt, but it all goes up the chain to Kofi Annan.

Kofi Annan's son, Kojo, is deeply involved in the scandal...

Kojo Annan, once worked for, and was later a consultant to, the Swiss-based firm Cotecna, which the U.N. hired to monitor Iraq's oil-for-food program. The fact that the U.N. gave a contract to a company which employed the secretary general's son'and which itself had been implicated in previous bribery scandals'is suspicious on its own. And now the world is learning that the oil-for-food program, which was put into place to ease the suffering of the Iraqi people during the years of sanctions, may have been a multibillion-dollar scam, allegedly involving kickbacks, political payoffs and other unpleasantness that reportedly put over $2 billion into the pockets of Saddam Hussein and favored European, Arab, Russian and Chinese companies money that should have gone to feed Iraqi children.

Kofi Annan made no real effort to investigate the program until after Saddam fell, and even then only after the scandal began to emerge. After the "investigation" began, he immediately began to monkeywrench their mission.

Just when we thought the corruption of the U.N.-Iraq Oil for Food program couldn’t get any more egregious, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan announced on October 13 that he was going to pay for the world body’s internal investigation with proceeds from Iraqi oil sales.

Last week ― seven months after appointing the panel ― Annan finally got around to deciding that the investigation should have a budget and money to fund its efforts. Though the Security Council had instructed Annan not to spend Oil for Food proceeds on the investigation, the Secretary General announced that he would do exactly that ― use money that was supposed to go to Iraqis to determine what part the United Nations played in helping Saddam steal billions of dollars that were supposed to go to Iraqis.

Annan, must be held accountable for the mismanagement which occurred under his administration...

The rank corruption of the body's Iraqi Oil-for-Food program is bubbling slowly to the surface - promising to ensnare scores of European politicians and businessmen, as well as a gaggle of Annan's Turtle Bay colleagues.

An upcoming audit being prepared by a firm that successfully traced stolen Holocaust-era assets is expected to confirm the names of some 200 people and companies around the world who allegedly were bribed by Saddam's regime.

The list, found in Iraq's Oil Ministry, was first cited by an Iraqi newspaper, al Mada, at the end of January.

Among those expected to be named are the head of the U.N. program, the Russian Communist Party, the PLO and "a French businessman close to President Jacques Chirac."

Furthermore, the Bush administration should publicly call the French and Russian governments to investigate the entities within their countries which openly exploited the Oil-for-Vetoes scandal for profit- at the expense of the Iraqi people.

2004-11-23T13:37:00.000-05:00

BEE-OTCH!!!

Dan Rather to Resign!

It looks like the effects of his sham-Assault on President Bush are finally starting to blow back on Dan Rather!

Let this be a lesson in credibility to the rest of the journalistic world. Don't let your politics ruin your journalistic integrity.

2004-11-23T09:24:00.000-05:00

Coalition Forces Attack South of Baghdad

The Associated Press is reporting that Coalition forces are attacking Sunni insurgent strongholds south of Baghdad right now in an attempt to kill or capture more of the foreign terrorists engaging in hostilities against the peace in Iraq.

It is very good to see a peace in the Shiite regions of Iraq since Moqtada al Sadr called for a hudna with the coalition. Hopefully, al Sistani will be able to keep a peace until after the election.

It's good to hear a lot of overwhelming support for Democratization in Iraq, from the Iraqis.

From BBCArabic.com: Countries neighbouring Iraq can play a big role in stabilising it. All international conferences about Iraq are in Iraq's interest. Just a reminder: Iraqis will not forget their sufferings, and the whole world will witness the emergence of a strong Iraq in time.
Nasrat Sankar, Samawa, Iraq

From BBCArabic.com: I think that Iraq's neighbours can play an important role in finding a solution to end the bloodshed in Iraq because the terrorists are getting support from those neighbouring countries.
Faisal Maatuq Jasim, Basra, Iraq

From BBCArabic.com: We - Iraqis - are counting on America's support to rebuild our country, and not on terrorists or Saddamites that some call 'resistance', who want our country to turn into a Taleban state.
Husein Almayahi, Alhella, Iraq

There were a few voices of hostility towards the elections too, most coming from Arabic and Western (non-US) nations...

From BBCArabic.com: The Sharm el-Sheikh conference is held to legalise the occupation, and those Iraqis who are taking part in it are standing with the occupiers. Where are those who oppose the occupation? The Americans went alone to occupy Iraq, so let them face alone the consequences of their unjust war.
Ziad, Jordan

The first elections of a nation cannot be successful since we all make mistake the first time. On the other hand democracy is not something that can be handed out and it is not "gift from god" (as Bush claims) either. The Iraqis should grow to democracy and the US cannot give democracy to Iraqis (even if that was the US motive which I seriously doubt).
Xrstina L, Greece

Who in their right mind is going to stand in a line for these elections? It would be like volunteering to be executed.
Paul Girling, Toronto, Canada

Yes it is, but it will have no value other than a chapter in the occupation plan. They have no choice or a dictated choice, they will be forced to chose Mr Iyad Allawi or a hand picked candidate by Western powers
Ahmad, Amman, Jordan

The Iraqi elections will be held if, and only if, the US government believes it can manipulate them sufficiently to ensure the election of a regime it can bribe or bully into accepting permanent US bases and effective US control of the economy - the aims of the invasion. Bear in mind that the members of the independent electoral commission were selected by the US-appointed Iraqi governing council, and that the debt write-off agreed last week depends on Iraq following the orders of the IMF - which is US dominated.
Nick Gotts, Aberdeen, Scotland

Interesting comments from the world-at-large.

2004-11-21T21:20:00.000-05:00

A Whiff of Grapeshot in Cote d'Ivoire

Having watched the video at length, it appears that the French army is returning to a centuries-old practice of dealing with large crowds of protestors- they're shooting at them. ... and apparently decapitating them.

See the video , a la Little Green Footballs, and watch as the French army shoots into a crowd killing and maiming women and children.

The most unsettling images in the film come at about 8:30 minutes when they show the headless corpse of one of the protestors whose head has just been freshly blown off by the French troops. Apparently, the whole confrontation started after the crowd set fire to some UN civilian vehicles, which appeared to be parked... apparently the French army didn't take kindly to their vehicles being torched, and decided to open fire on the crowd.

Victims, young and old, indiscriminately shot in their heads, torsos, appendages... mindless brutality against a seemingly unarmed and relatively passive crowd.

Most interesting moment... 1:32-1:42 minutes, when the crowd seems to be chanting "USA, USA, USA." The Ivorians know what Americans on the right know, the French are Americas enemies. To chant "USA" is to imply a call to Frances enemies to help them.

I think the US should make a strong call to force French peacekeepers to leave Cote d'Ivoire, as the Ivoirians clearly do NOT want them there.

2004-11-20T09:41:00.000-05:00

Limbless Torso Found In Fallujah Believed to be Margaret Hassan

According to the Austrailian...

The discovery of the woman wearing a blue dress and with her face shockingly disfigured was made as US marines moved through the south of Fallujah, hunting the remaining diehard rebels after a week of fierce fighting to regain control of the city.

"It is definitely a Caucasian woman with long, blonde hair," said a military official, who cut open a cover that had been over the corpse. Two Western women are known to have been kidnapped in Iraq. Teresa Borcz Khalifa, 54, a Polish-born longtime resident of Iraq, was seized last month and has blonde hair.

Margaret Hassan, 59, director of Care International in Iraq, was also abducted last month and has chestnut-coloured hair.

"It is a female ... missing all four appendages, with a slashed throat and disembowelled, she has been dead for a while but only in this location for a day or two," said Benjamin Finnell, a hospital apprentice with the Navy Corps, who inspected the body.

According to Fox News, and several other media sources...

A Polish woman who was abducted last month from her apartment in Baghdad has been freed, the Polish prime minister said Saturday.

The hostage, Teresa Borcz Khalifa, "has been freed. She's here and healthy," Prime Minister Marek Belka told reporters in Warsaw. "Officials of different services took part in her release in cooperation with institutions from many countries."

Borcz Khalifa, 54, a longtime Baghdad resident, was shown in captivity in videos aired on Al-Jazeera on Oct. 28 and Oct. 30. Her captors, calling themselves, the Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Fundamentalist Brigades, demanded the withdrawal of Polish troops from Iraq.

Her release came days after officials said they believed another woman hostage, Briton Margaret Hassan, had been killed by her captors.

I'm not sure if anyone in the media has reported it with certainty, but if there were two women the torso could have belonged to, and one of them is now free- it seems a certainty that the torso is that of the brutally murdered Margaret Hassan.

They cut off her arms and legs, cut apart her face, slit her throat, and disemboweled her... I pity her if she was alive through much of that severe torture. This is what the foreign-terrorists in Iraq have wrought.

2004-11-19T23:52:00.000-05:00

That's Right!

You fuck with the Detroit Pistons, you fuck with Detroit... at your own peril.

DETROIT A nasty fight involving fans and players has broken out with 45 seconds left in the Detroit Pistons-Indiana Pacers game.
The fight began when Detroit center Ben Wallace drove in the lane and was fouled hard by Indiana's Ron Artest.

Several fans then got into the action. Artest charged into the stands to fight with a fan. Then more fans began throwing debris on the court. Several scuffles between players and Detroit fans broke out.

Detroit coach Larry Brown took to the microphone to implore the crowd to behave. But the rowdy scene continued and both teams eventually went to the locker room.

Indiana was leading 97-to-82 when the game was called.

Wait until next time, I'd bet money that Artest will take a glass bottle to the head before the end of the next game. You don't mess with our franchise players, especially if you're some scrub thug from the Pacers.

2004-11-19T10:02:00.000-05:00

What Happens...

...After a Bush cabinet member quits? If you're Spencer Abraham- the outgoing Secretary of Energy- you get a new job, probably as a lobbyist. The Detroit Free Press has this interesting article listing Abraham's job options.

2004-11-18T22:02:00.000-05:00

Still Not Sorry

...or, what the hell happened to werenotsorry.com???

I had been wondering since this last weekend: "What happened to werenotsorry.com? The site that sprang up in response to the pitiful weresorryeverybody.com that served as a big sick apology from the Leftists in the US to the Leftists around the world.

It turns out some nasty pissed-off Leftists plagued the founder of the We're Not Sorry website with threatening phone calls to his home, which is why his webpage is offline- the poor guy was afraid for his family. It sounds like they tracked his personal information through the WHOIS registrar and called his house making threats. (Thats the kind of shit that Klan did, and the Leftists preach tolerance? My ass...)

I am sorry about the amount of crap and hate that i've recieved because of this website...

I only started this website to give another point of view. Even my wife who voted for Kerry is disgusted by the behavior of, and emails from, the losers who can't accept a different side of an issue.

Two things that really did it for me.

1. The phone calls to my house. I could care less that you voted for kerry and that he rocks. Talk about brownshirts.

2. http://www.weisnotsorry.com . Check it out. It's how we on the right are perceived. Also check out http://www.fuckthesouth.com .

We are not all bigots.

We are hard working folks with familys that want the best for our children...

Just don't try to change our values and we will leave you the hell alone.

Thanks for the donations. Its paid for the bandwidth up to now. Anything left over will be donated to http://www.notsorryeverybody.com

WNS

Thanks to Risawn for clarifying what happened, as well as for inspiring me to post a picture to the original website; the picture of me and my wife was at the bottom of page 12, and may have been the last photo added before it was taken offline.

In searching for an answer to what happened, I actually found several sites which have popped up in its place. That's right, we're like a fucking Hydra. The Leftists chop off one of our heads, and three more grow back in its place. I've submitted the picture of me and my wife to all 3 in a show of support and a defiant middle finger to the nasty pricks that scared the original founder of the WNS website.

I'm Not Sorry Everybody

Just One More Farms - Not Sorry Everyone Page

Right Said Red- The best of the bunch, IMHO. :-)

2004-11-18T15:10:00.000-05:00

Michigan Job Market Improves

I was just reading the Detroit News webpage, and I saw some positive info on my states job market... it's getting better, but still nowhere near good.

I hired a new intern today. My last intern is moving on to bigger and better things, and I had the HR manager give an offer to the first guy who interviewed; he was perfect for the job. My company got lucky that we didn't have to wait until the seat got cold to even have someone come along to interview. I hope this is ominous that the job market is improving around here.

2004-11-17T14:54:00.000-05:00

Queer-Eye for the Glorious Leader Guy?

Kim Jong Il, the murderous tyranical leader of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (aka North Korea), is an egotist. He is an egotist in charge of a Stalinist communist state where his rule depends upon the careful maintenance of a cult-of-personality. In pursuit of maintaining the cult-of-personality, Kim must use his nations media to elevate his position to that of a godlike figure in the eyes of his people. Control of the destinies of millions of North Koreans depends upon the rabble throngs perception of Kim as a savior.

That's all well and good, but Kim is also very media savvy. He prides himself on his knowledge of western pop-culture, and his ability to appreciate western culture. These things are important to him because he sees himself as a very important figure in the world. In addition to viewing himself as important, he wants to be viewed by the outside world as important too, and he desires respect.No doubt he has seen Team America World Police, and he is probably not happy with his portrayal in that movie. In addition to the bad publicity from that film, the man is not perceived well by anyone in any media outlet I can think of. I wonder if the pressure has gotten to poor "wittow" Jong, and if he's ordering himself a queer-eye style make over. This would explain why the cult-ish posters all came down so fast...

Given his egotism, knowledge of Western culture, and desire to be respected and revered by the world-at-large, I theorize that Kim Jong Il is trying to improve his image.

2004-11-15T18:48:00.000-05:00

Charles Krauthammer: "The man who murdered more innocent Jews than anyone since Hitler died an international hero."

Krauthammer has such a way with words. He sums up succinctly all that is wrong with the medias portrayal of this dead tyrant.

Reading the headlines and news coverage from all but a few publications across the English-speaking world, it's clear to me that almost all journalists- and subsequently, the intellectual Left- are willing to overlook Arafat's horrendous crimes because they sympathize with his people.

I say, "Yasser Arafat's open goals were to kill civilians to draw attention to the 'plight' of his people. His goals may have been to help the Palestinians, but that doesn't excuse his monstrousness." Take what you will from that comment, but I indict whole reams of people across the globe for embracing this dead beast.

2004-11-15T15:08:00.000-05:00

Colin Powell Resigns & More Big News

Sadly, Colin Powell resigned as Secretary of State this morning- he will be missed as a voice of moderation amongst Bush's advisors. I didn't see this coming, despite all of the rumors swirling about his departure. Perhaps I was more hoping that he would stay, and couldn't bear to think of him leaving. I hope Condoleeza Rice replaces him, the only other person I'd like to see in that position would be Joseph Lieberman, and I doubt he'd take the job.

Also, Russell Jones (aka ODB, Old Dirty Bastard, Dirt McGirt, Big Baby Jesus, Osiris, etc...) died over the weekend. Most surprisingly is how quietly he went. For a man who lived larger than life, his passing was particularly quiet. I'm not a big rap music fan, but this quy transcended rap music as a caricature of the hip-hope genre.

2004-11-12T10:58:00.000-05:00

Arafat- Not Worthy of Respect

Elan Journo from Mens News Daily has written a very poignant article regarding the Wests obsession with one of the most prolific mass-murdering-terrorists of all-time.

What made Yasir Arafat’s final days appalling was not the farcical prevarications about whether he were dead or alive, nor the soap-opera quarrel between his wife and his political cronies; it was that so evil a man commanded so much respect.

Since his airlift to a Paris hospital, as the welcomed guest of the French government and with throngs of journalists on the scene, Arafat’s death has been presented as the heartbreaking end of a noble man. Reacting to a premature report of Arafat’s death, President Bush wished that “God bless his soul.” Upon Arafat’s death, Jacques Chirac lauded him as "a man of courage and conviction.” The French gave him a military salute as Arafat’s coffin was sent to his funeral in Egypt, which many heads of state are expected to attend.

Why do the West’s politicians hold in such high esteem a man who unleashed a ferocious campaign of international terrorism that, across a span of forty years, has claimed the lives of thousands of Israeli, Lebanese, Jordanian, Palestinian, and American civilians?

Great Question!

I wonder if Osama bin Laden will get the same treatment in his waning days.

2004-11-12T09:57:00.000-05:00

No Shit

Here's a real shocker- college campuses are dominated by Liberals who preach diversity but condemn conservatism.

From the Chronicle of Higher Educationarticle "Liberal Groupthink is Anti-Intellectual"...

Conservatives on college campuses scored a tactical hit when the American Enterprise Institute's magazine published a survey of voter registration among humanities and social-science faculty members several years ago. More than nine out of 10 professors belonged to the Democratic or Green party, an imbalance that contradicted many liberal academics' protestations that diversity and pluralism abound in higher education. Further investigations by people like David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, coupled with well-publicized cases of discrimination against conservative professors, reinforced the findings and set "intellectual diversity" on the agenda of state legislators and members of Congress.

The public has now picked up the message that "campuses are havens for left-leaning activists," according to a Chronicle poll of 1,000 adult Americans this year. Half of those surveyed -- 68 percent who call themselves "conservative" and even 30 percent who say they are "liberal" -- agreed that colleges improperly introduce a liberal bias into what they teach. The matter, however, is clearly not just one of perception. Indeed, in another recent survey, this one conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute of the University of California at Los Angeles, faculty members themselves chose as their commitment "far left" or "liberal" more than two and a half times as often as "far right" or "conservative." As a Chronicle article last month put it: "On left-leaning campuses around the country, professors on the right feel disenfranchised."

The article is fantastic, and is well worth reading. Hopefully, it will have some measureable effect of bringing this issue more wide-spread attention. I spent 4 years in the Leftist hell-hole of the University of Detroit-Mercy, and I swore I'd never give them another penny after the horrible and oppressive atmosphere of Leftist Political Correctness. I hate PC, and I HATE Leftist Academia and their corrupt idea-destroying cronies.

2004-11-11T22:25:00.000-05:00

Remembering Cleo Noel

Cleo Noel was the US Ambassador to Sudan. He died in 1973 in Sudan after a terrorist killer ordered him to be murdered. Here's Cleo Noel's webpage at the Arlington National Cemetary website, and here are the most poignant details...

The three ambassadors who died violent deaths were Cleo Noel Jr.,killed in March 1973 when Palestinian terrorists struck an embassy in Sudan; Adolph Dubs, killed in 1973 when Afghan police stormed a hotel room where he was being held by terrorists; and Arnold Raphel, who died in 1988 when a plane crashed [...after a bomb exploded on the plane in Pakistan. Interesting note: All 3 ambassadors who suffered violent deaths died in service in Moslem countries.]

Ambassador Cleo A. Noel Jr. and George Curtis Moore - do you remember these names? You should. Ambassador Noel and Moore were among a group of men seized and held hostage by Yassir Arafat’s Black September terrorists during a reception at the Saudi Embassy in Khartoum. Their lives hung by a thread, a thread that Yassir Arafat ordered cut. His words ordering the execution of these top American officials and a Belgian diplomat were recorded by the Israelis who gave the tape to the State Department and President Nixon in March 1973. This was later confirmed by Gen. Ariel Sharon.

Cleo A. Noel Jr. and George Curtis Moore were among a group of men seized by Black September terrorists during a reception held at the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Khartoum [Sudan]. The terrorists demanded the release of Sirhan Sirhan, the Palestinian assassin of Robert Kennedy, as well as terrorists being held in Israeli and European prisons. President Nixon refused to negotiate. The tape was of conversations between Arafat in Beirut and his thugs in Khartoum. Execute the diplomats, ordered Arafat. The terrorists obeyed, machine gunning the unarmed, hapless Noel and Moore. They also killed a Belgium diplomat. The authenticity of the tape was verified in U.S. laboratories by both the State Department and the White House.

On March 2, 1973, around 8:00pm (local) --Abu-Iyad called Abu-Ghassan and gave him the Cold River [Nahr al-Bard] code: "Remember Nahr al-Bard. The people's blood in the Nahr al-Bard is screaming for revenge. These are our final orders. We and the world are watching you." The execution took place on 9:06. (Reportedly, about half an hour later than planned because Abu-Tariq let the Americans write last letters and wills.) A few minutes later, when the international media still did not report the killing, Beirut wanted to make sure that the executions took place. Arafat himself did the talking to Abu-Ghassan. He asked him if he received the code word Nahr al-Bard and if he understood what it meant. Abu-Ghassan assured Arafat that he had understood everything and that his -- Arafat's -- orders had already been carried out fully.

Of course, the terrorist murderer who ordered Ambassador Noel killed was Yasser Arafat; just one of the thousands whose deaths Arafat is directly responsible for.

If there is a hell, I have no doubt that Yasser Arafat is burning there.

2004-11-11T10:43:00.000-05:00

Big Trunk: On Arafat's Obituary

The Big Trunk at Powerline Blog has some very interesting things to say about Arafat's life and death. I'm not utterly convinced that he was a homosexual who died of AIDS, but I wouldn't put it outside of the realm of truth. Perhaps someone will leak some of his medical history, or maybe someone will come forward with more details, but it makes sense if you think about it.

Read Trunk's post here.

2004-11-11T09:55:00.000-05:00

Arafat Dead

The 75-year old terrorist and faux-peacemaker died in a Paris hospital. There is still some confusion over whether he died from natural causes, or from the French medical treatment he received.

Upon news of his death, thousands of Palestinians ran into the streets to light tire fires and threaten the Israelis.

For more on the story, click here.

2004-11-10T16:34:00.000-05:00

I AM NOT SORRY

Apparently, there's a website where Liberals and Leftists- and those just generally disappointed in George W Bush's re-election can go to say they're "Sorry" to the rest of the world on behalf of the United States. We'll I'd like to say to all those "Sorry" people that posted pictures to that website- "FUCK YOU." How dare you presume to apologize for me on my behalf to a world that thinks it should be able to control or influence our political destiny.

Thank GOD there's a website to counter that pitiful pathetic meekness. To see Americans, like our fierce warrior to the right, who are NOT Sorry- click here.[The site seems to be offline now, for some reason...]

To see pictures of a bunch of people who ARE NOT SORRY for re-electing George W. Bush, check out the We Are Not Sorry website.

P.S. - To see the woman in the picture on the right in full battle regalia ready to fight for her country, I think that's great and really empowering. I hope my daughter can grow up into such a woman- should she so choose. It's sickening to me how women are treated in the rest of the world, and this woman here exemplifies all that is right about the equality in our country. If you're from a country that oppresses women and you're a man that supports that oppression, know that this woman would kill you in a heartbeat if she was so ordered by her Commander in Chief.

2004-11-10T13:34:00.000-05:00

Alberto Gonzales First Hispanic AG

This blows my Rudolph Giuliani theory right to hell, but it's nice to see that Bush made a quick appointment to the vacancy.

Read the Yahoo! story.

2004-11-10T11:31:00.000-05:00

Bad Schools Force Parents to Seek Better Solutions

John Engler, former Republican Governor of Michigan did parents throughout the state a big favor when he signed into law his "School of Choice" legislation. School of Choice allows districts to compete with each other for state education funding, by allowing students to switch districts. This provides parents the ability to pull their children from underperforming schools and school districts and place them into better schools.

In addition school-of-choice public schools, parents have also been handed the option of sending their children to a number of quality charter schools.

These additional choices have fostered the implosion of poor-performing school districts like the Detroit Public School system. The DPS have been systematically screwing the children of Detroit for generations. It's nice to see they're losing tens-of-millions in state funding this year. Hopefully they'll have no choice but to fully reform themselves before they go bankrupt.

In 1999 the Detroit School Board was replaced by a council of appointees from state and local governments, and the former Detroit mayor was given a large measure of control. That committees mandate has expired and the state legislature called for a local vote on handover of control. Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick sponsored an initiative in an attempt to gain personal control of the DPS- but the proposal was overturned by the voters of the city. The failure of his proposal will likely mean that the old-style school board which failed the city in the past will return to further damage the Detroit Public Schools.

In any case, its nice to know that parents in Detroit will continue to have the options provided by School-of-Choice and charter schools.

2004-11-09T20:28:00.000-05:00

Who'll Replace John Ashcroft?

...from a post I left at Heretical Ideas

My money is on Rudolph Giuliani. I think the Republicans are going to try to create a swarm of charismatic diverse candidates for the 2008 race, and they know that Giuliani is a popular and charismatic guy- who just happens to be perfect for the job.

From Biography.com...

Upon his graduation from college in 1965, with his career plans still undecided, he entered New York University Law School, graduating magna cum laude in 1968.

A clerkship at the office of New York Federal District Court Judge Lloyd F. McMahon led to a job as an assistant United States attorney in the Southern district of New York. There, the ambitious young Giuliani was named chief of the narcotics unit and promoted to the position of executive U.S. attorney. In 1975, Giuliani moved to Washington, D.C., to work as the associate deputy attorney general and chief of staff for Deputy Attorney General Harold R. Tyler. By that time, Giuliani—a Democrat—had become increasingly disillusioned with what he saw as the leftist leanings of the party. For the first time, he registered as a Republican, like Tyler. With Jimmy Carter’s victory in the 1976 presidential election, Tyler and other high-ranking Republicans were on their way out of Washington. Giuliani followed his boss back to New York, where he became a partner in the law firm of Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler.

After practicing law for four years, Giuliani was named associate attorney general in the new administration of President Ronald Reagan in 1981. As the third-highest-ranking member of the Department of Justice, Giuliani oversaw all the U.S. attorneys’ federal law enforcement agencies, as well as the Bureau of Corrections, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and the U.S. Marshals.

In 1983, Giuliani returned to Manhattan to work as the U.S. attorney for the Southern district of New York. In his six years in the office, he was extremely aggressive in the prosecution of accused criminals, including drug dealers, members of organized crime, and white-collar criminals. Giuliani’s critics accused him of being overzealous and of prosecuting cases merely to advance his own political ambitions. Whatever his motives, his methods paid off, as he amassed an impressive record of 4,152 convictions and only 25 reversals.

A vocal and very visible member of the New York political scene, Giuliani entered the race for mayor of New York City in 1989. He lost by a close margin to his Democratic rival David N. Dinkins, who became the city’s first African-American mayor. Four years later, when Giuliani ran again, he was able to capitalize on the fact that people saw Dinkins as largely ineffectual and blamed him for the city’s mounting murder rate and homeless population. Giuliani won the election by a margin of two percentage points over Dinkins, becoming New York’s first Republican mayor in over 20 years.

2004-11-08T15:14:00.000-05:00

Arafat Likely Brain-Dead

All the indicators are pointing to the likely scenario that Arafat actually IS braindead, but that the life-support systems are keeping him in "Stable" condition in that French hospital. "Stable" Condition in this case doesn't mean that he's ALIVE, just that he's not getting cold and stiff.

I think it's safe to say that the days of Arafat ordering school children or civilians killed are in the past.

Suha Arafat now isn't even allowing other PA officials to see her husband. It seems clear to me that at this point, she's just trying to hold onto her importance for as long as possible... and Suha Arafat's importance dies with Yasser.

2004-11-08T11:13:00.000-05:00

French Peacekeepers Rob Ivorian Bank!

Granted, this did happen before the latest episodes of violence, but it definitely helps to explain why the Ivorians HATE the French.

BBC News: [French UN] Troops 'stole Ivorian bank cash'

Twelve French soldiers on peacekeeping duties in Ivory Coast have been arrested in connection with a bank theft there last week.

The troops had been assigned to protect a branch of the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) and were charged with stealing $120,000 (100,000 euros).

French military spokesman Colonel Henry Aussavy said the accused soldiers were being sent home to face French justice.

To face French "justice?" I'm sure that makes the Ivorians feel a Lot better... (/sarcasm)

2004-11-08T10:20:00.000-05:00

Disgusting: France Loves Arafat, Hates Bush

According to this article- Yasser Arafat is loved by the French.

Well-wishers have created a makeshift shrine of flowers, candles and messages of support outside the hospital where Yasser Arafat is being treated.

People of all ages have come to this well-heeled Paris suburb bearing bouquets and signs of encouragement, in French and Arabic. Flowers line the wall for about 40 yards, melted wax dots the sidewalk and burning candles perfume the air.

President Bush is hated by the French.

No American President in recent history has been so vilified - especially by the Europeans. Even the 60th anniversary of the American-led D-Day invasion was cause for despicable attacks on Bush. One French magazine had the gall to question whether the American President should even come to Normandy for the anniversary celebrations.

Why even keep the pretense of an "alliance" with the French when they worship a Terrorist and despise the Democratically elected President of a historical ally?

FTF!

Lifted entirely from: Powerline Blog.

Update: It looks like Charles Johnson also copped his LGF post directly from Powerline, but I beat him to the punch... ;-)

2004-11-07T20:41:00.000-05:00

Clinton Was Ready to Nuke North Korea

My respect for Bill Clinton just went up a bit.

Won-Jae Park of the South Korean The Dong-a Ilbo's Internet website, reports that former President Bill Clinton had been prepared to use nuclear weapons against North Korea had one of any number of scenarios come to fruition. In fact, US forces staged mock bombing runs in North Carolina in preparation for potential strikes against North Korea.

His information is based on now declassified Defense Department and CIA documents released to the Kyodo news agency.

For more information on Clinton's planning, read this story from the Washington Times.

2004-11-07T13:20:00.000-05:00

Mens News Daily: No Blood for Cocoa!

I'm happy to see that Joe Mariani over at Mens News Daily seems to have come to the same conclusion as me regarding the French quagmire in the Ivory Coast.

Here are some excerpts from his quality article, which everyone who visits this site should read in its entirety...

A unilateral invasion without the permission of the United Nations. Thousands of civilian deaths. Mass graves uncovered. A foreign power imposing its will on a xenophobic, restless, resentful populace. Massive protests in the streets against the meddling foreigners, calling their leader a "terrorist" and "enslaver." More troops pouring in, desperately trying to keep order and failing. Widespread fear of a quagmire. Whole segments of the population begging President Bush to help them expel the hated French invaders...

Hang on... what was that last part again?

...In February 2003, the United Nations quietly passed a resolution agreeing to the deployment of the French troops that had been there for five months already. Remember the huge outcry by American Liberals against the unilateral French invasion of Côte d'Iviore? Don't feel badly -- neither do I.

How long will it be, I wonder, before the French ask for our help? What should we tell them? [To go fuck themselves? -Darius] Should we say that our own troops are busy fighting in Iraq -- you remember, the place you refused to send troops when we asked for help? Should we remind them that the last time they got in over their heads and asked for American aid was in a place called Dien Bien Phu in 1954, and we'd rather not repeat history? The French loss at Dien Bien Phu led to Vietnam being split in two, and America, having already become invested in the outcome, was almost inexorably drawn into the conflict between North and South. Will we turn our backs on the French in Côte d'Iviore as they continue to do in Iraq, even after the emergence of a democratic government? Jacques Chirac is still trying to cause trouble by snubbing Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. Chirac skipped out on greeting him in Brussels to visit dying terrorist Yasser Arafat.

The question is, can we turn our backs on the Ivorians if they need our help? On the other hand, can we deal with more anti-war protesters in the streets of New York, this time chanting "No Blood For Cocoa?"

Personally, I feel we should the arm the Ivorian rebels to the fucking teeth, just like the French armed the Iraqi government to the teeth right before our little conflict began.

FTF!

2004-11-07T10:56:00.000-05:00

Washington Times: Netherlands Braces for Jihad

The headline at the Washington Times says it all... I'm going to republish the entire article, because everyone should read it...

Netherlands braces for 'jihad'

THE HAGUE — The Dutch government yesterday vowed tough measures against what a leading politician called "the arrival of jihad in the Netherlands" after a death threat to a Dutch lawmaker was found spiked with a knife to the body of a slain filmmaker by his radical Muslim attacker.

A five-page letter released Thursday night by the justice minister forced political leaders — including Amsterdam's Jewish mayor and members of parliament — to take on bodyguards.

The document, attached to the body of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, was titled "An Open Letter to [Aayan] Hirsi Ali," referring to a Somali-born member of parliament. She had scripted Mr. van Gogh's latest film, "Submission," which criticized the treatment of women under Islam.

Miss Hirsi Ali, who calls herself an ex-Muslim, has gone into hiding.

"Death, Ms. Hirsi Ali, is the common theme of all that exists. You and the rest of the cosmos cannot escape this truth," the letter said.

"There will come a day when one soul cannot help another soul. A day that goes paired with terrible tortures, ... when the unjust will press horrible screams from their lungs.

"Screams, Ms. Hirsi Ali, that will cause chills to run down a person's back, and make the hairs on their heads stand straight up. People will be drunk with fear, while they are not drunken. Fear will fill the air on the Great Day," the letter said.

"I know definitely that you, Oh America, will go down. I know definitely that you, Oh Europe, will go down. I know definitely that you, Oh Netherlands, will go down. I know definitely that you, Oh Hirsi Ali, will go down," it said.

Deputy Prime Minister Gerrit Zalm agreed with comments by other politicians who called Mr. van Gogh's slaying a declaration of Islamic jihad, or "holy war."

"We are not going to tolerate this. We are going to ratchet up the fight against this sort of terrorism," he said. "The increase in radicalization is worse than we had thought."

Among measures under consideration is an emergency law to enable authorities to revoke the Dutch nationality of dual citizens suspected of terrorist activity so that they can be deported.

Mr. Zalm said the intelligence service, which already has expanded since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, would receive more funding to help it monitor potential terrorist recruits.

The suspected killer in the van Gogh case, a 26-year-old Dutch-Moroccan national, was arraigned on six terrorism-related charges.

Mr. van Gogh, a descendant of 19th-century Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, was fatally shot and stabbed Tuesday while cycling down an Amsterdam street. The remains of the provocative social commentator and author, whose throat was slashed in the attack, will be cremated Tuesday in a public service.

The slaying is testing already strained relations between the ethnic Dutch population and the Muslim community. There are about 300,000 Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands out of a population of 16 million.

Mr. Zalm said talks were ongoing with Muslim groups over how to avoid a violent backlash against Muslims.

Arsonists are believed to have set fire to a mosque in the central Dutch city of Utrecht, police spokesman Peter Keijzers said. There were no reports of injuries.

Jozias van Aartsen, parliamentary speaker for the nationalist People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the second-largest party in the government of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, issued a statement that called Mr. van Gogh's slaying tantamount to a declaration of war.

"The jihad has come to the Netherlands and a small group of jihadist terrorists is attacking the principles of our country," he said. "I hope the Netherlands will now move beyond denial and do what is fitting in a democracy — take action.

"These people don't want to change our society, they want to destroy it," he said.

The terrorist threat left by Mr. van Gogh's killer carries the ideology of a terrorist movement, Takfir wal Hijra or "Repentance and Flight," which advocates isolation from what it calls the sinful world, Dutch press reported.

Chief prosecutor Leo de Wit said the suspected killer, identified only as Mohammed B., faces at least six terrorism-related counts, including charges of murder and "participating in a criminal organization with terrorist characteristics."

The suspect, wounded in the leg in a shootout with police, has refused to talk to investigators. He was arrested with a note in his pocket titled "Drenched in Blood."

Authorities arrested eight other suspects in Mr. van Gogh's slaying and are looking into any links between the suspects and foreign terrorist groups.

Two suspects were released, Mr. de Wit said yesterday. Six will be charged with conspiring to commit murder, he said.

Prosecutors said all are Islamic radicals of North African ancestry. Four also were arrested Oct. 23 on suspicion of plotting a terrorist attack but were released for lack of evidence. Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner told parliament the four had contacts with a suspect in last year's Casablanca bombings.

Despite the fact that much of Europe can expect these types of attacks to increase, the majority of Leftists are blind to the threat. Do you remember what Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said after the Van Gogh murder?

"Nothing is known about the motive of the killer."

I find it hard to believe he wouldn't have some ideas as to what the motive was for the killing, but if he's really in doubt- I have an idea he'll find out soon enough...

2004-11-06T22:48:00.000-05:00

Bravo

Talk about taking things too far...

2004-11-06T20:41:00.000-05:00

Socialists Pressing for Global Tax at the UN

Socialist nations France and Brazil- who are dealing with crippled economies- together with Socialist nation Spain and Chile, presented a framework for Global Taxation in the UN General Assembly earlier this week.

The following is a quote from the webpage of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (a Leftist Organization)...

GLOBAL TAX OPTIONS PRESENTED TO FINANCE DEVELOPMENT AID

Taxing financial transactions and arms sales were among the options presented in a key report recently released by France, Brazil, Chile and Spain at the UN General Assembly. The report, which seeks to contribute to the ongoing fight against world hunger and poverty, is the output of a Technical Group on Innovative Financing Mechanism headed by Jean Pierre Landau, French Inspector of Finances, which explored feasible and politically-acceptable alternatives to financing development aid. Other options presented included the UK-proposed International Financial Facility and incrementing the issuance of special drawing rights in the International Monetary Fund. The report further addressed options such as taking action against tax evasion and tax havens, increasing remittance benefits, socially responsible investment, and voluntary contributions through credit cards. While the report did not consider the potential for a carbon tax to finance development as originally intended, the group has agreed to discuss it in the future.

[Note: A "carbon tax" is a tax levied upon nations that create energy; unless they use solar or wind. An absurd yet chilling proposal.]

Click here for the full news brief.

Everytime I read more about the "intellectual elite" of Socialist Nations, I become less and less shocked at the sheer asininity of their ludicrous proposals...

2004-11-06T18:52:00.000-05:00

Western Africa Threatened by French Army

There's something you don't hear very often... anyone being threatened by the French army, but it is happening.

Am I the only one that wants to protest this dastardly unprovoked attack by the French? Who's with me? Lets start a letter writing campaign to average French citizens imploring them to beg their country to back-off of this tragic endeavour. How many innocent Africans have to die before the French hegemony is recognized for what it is? Maybe we can involve ourselves as much as possible in their political process to ensure their corrupt politicians don't get re-elected...

Our anti-war chant will be:
No blood for cocoa, coffee, and timber!

We can even wish the valiant troops fighting the French the best of luck in killing French forces, as their corrupt government involves them in a deadly quagmire.

Hmm... You know, as nice and just as all this sounds- especially since they've worked so hard against US; two wrongs don't make a right. Still, I have little sympathy for our "ally" in their African efforts.

Any nation that works so hard against our efforts, doesn't deserve our symapthy in theirs.

2004-11-06T14:35:00.000-05:00

Final Results: 286 Bush, 252 Kerry

___With an electoral tally of 286 for, and 252 against... and a current popular vote tally of 59,651,290 for, and 56,158,908 against- President Bush won with a clear majority of 3.5 Million votes more than Senator Kerry.

Bush is the first President since his father in 1988 to win more than 50% of the popular vote.

The Republican party made major gains in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, increasing their already modest leads.

The election was also noteworth because it showed that despite massive media bias, partisan star power, 527 abuses, Michael Moore's propoganda, and corrupt Billionaire George Soros' millions- George W Bush was able to fend off brutal attacks from all sides and maintain his hold on the Presidency. It makes you wonder how he would have fared had he not had to deal with all the negative attacks.

2004-11-05T14:11:00.000-05:00

What the...?!?

Can SOMEONE please tell me what THIS is all about? I find this story confusing and upsetting.

Please reply in the comments section.

2004-11-05T11:25:00.000-05:00

The Quote of the Day

"Jerusalem is where Jewish Kings are buried, not Arab Terrorists." -Yosef Lapid, Israeli Justice Minister

This quote was spoken by Yosef Lapid when referring to Arafats demand to be buried near the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Mr. Lapid has voiced his personal opposition to this demand, and I agree whole-heartedly. Why should the man who spent his entire life persecuting and murdering Jews be allowed to be buried in Israel's holiest city, especially when his family has no roots there, and when Arafat actually owns several gravesites in Gaza?

Read more about the controversy at the Times Online.

2004-11-04T21:12:00.000-05:00

Multiculturalism vs. Acculturation

(...and how it leads to murder)

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, Multiculturalism is defined as

of, relating to, reflecting, or adapted to diverse cultures

The term is used often by the left to describe Western society, or their ideal of Western society as exemplified by their utopic vision. Ideally, it is a utopia where all cultures are respected equally and all opposing cultural norms are honored.

As a consequence, Multiculturalists dismiss notions of Acculturation. According to Merriam-Webster, Acculturation

1 : cultural modification of an individual, group, or people by adapting to or borrowing traits from another culture; also : a merging of cultures as a result of prolonged contact
2 : the process by which a human being acquires the culture of a particular society from infancy

Throughout time, groups who have left their home culture- for whatever reason- have been required to acculturate when they enter into their new surroundings. Through acculturation, groups tend to take on the value systems of the society to which they migrate, and thus- they develop a sense of belonging with their great community. Through this process practices are shared, adapted and mix with other customs, in fact some cultures have mixed fully and new cultures have been born. When acculturation is looked down upon and denigrated- as it is now in most Western Democracies- then acculturation does not occur, and divisions keep foreign groups from fully belonging to their new environment. Why? Because the underlying fundamental values are different, and some value systems simply cannot coexist peacefully. Thus, conflict is engendered and bred- and eventually erupts in violence.

The brutal murder of Theo Van Gogh is a manifestation of just such violence. From an article which appeared originally at Human Events Online, but which is copied here from Lucianne...

Theo van Gogh was murdered in Amsterdam on Tuesday. His attacker was a Dutch Moroccan who wore traditional Islamic clothing. After shooting van Gogh, he stabbed him repeatedly, slit his throat with a butcher knife, and left a note containing verses from the Qur'an on the body. Said Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende: "Nothing is known about the motive" of the killer.

Although Jan Balkenende claims not to know the motive of the killer, the most basic detective work will find several reasons the killer wanted Van Gogh dead.

Theo Van Gogh was an openly-gay film-maker who made a film, Submission, which was about the oppression of women in Moslem society. Van Gogh and Hirsi Ali, the writer of Submission and a member of Dutch parliament who has renounced her Moslem identity, both received heaps of hate mail and death threats after the release of the film. It looks like one of Van Gogh's harshest critics finally followed through on the threats. Ali, who is under police protection, mourns her fallen friend.

Essentially, this murder comes down to values and lack of acculturation on the part of Van Gogh's assailant- a 26-year-old Moroccan born Moslem man. The values of Van Gogh- represented by freedom of speech, respect of women, and homosexuality- are not honored by the Islamic minority which resides in the Netherlands. Indeed, as Van Gogh expressed his values, he enraged the men who threatened him... just as elements of their society enraged him and Hirsi Ali- which led them to create their movie.

The opposing societal values conflicted and led directly to Van Gogh's death. To Van Gogh, creating Submission was an issue of freedom of speech. He was voicing his opinion of Moslem abuse of women in an artistic forum, but to his killers he was committing heresy. In the Netherlands, it's not a crime to speak freely, but his attackers abide by a code where heresy must be punished by death... so they punished him. To these killers, apostasy is also a death sentence- which is why Hirsi Ali has been threatened since she publicly renounced the Moslem faith she was born into. To Van Gogh's killers, she has committed a double crime of Heresy and Apostasy, and she is a woman- who would typically receive an even harsher punishment under Islamic law. She is right to be afraid.

Those champions of Multiculturalism might want to think about how they're going to deal with the growing number of conflicts as the tensions rise. The only way to reduce the tension is to slow foster acculturation, and bring the Moslems in our society into our fold by forcing them to adapt- as much as possible- to our value system.

2004-11-04T13:50:00.000-05:00

Michelle Malkin on Voter Turnout

As usual, Michelle Malkin writes eloquently on the topic of voter turnout...

Despite apocalyptic claims of systemic voter suppression, upwards of 120 million Americans were able to navigate traffic, traverse bad weather, find their polling places, stand in line without fainting, elbow their way past United Nations nosybodies and MoveOn.org mobsters, press their trembling fingers onto computer screens without getting shocked, and -- gasp -- competently cast their votes without tearfully begging for do-overs.

The projected turnout is up 15 million from the record set four years ago. With more than half the popular vote, President Bush has topped Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan's popular vote tallies. He will earn the distinction of being the presidential candidate who has earned more votes than any other in the nation's entire history. "W." stands for "Wow!"

And that's just the Opening... read the whole thing.

2004-11-04T11:53:00.000-05:00

ABC News: Arafat Clinically Dead

ABC News is reporting that Palestinian "President" Yasser Arafat was pronounced clinically DEAD today by French Doctors.

His aides have denied these claims, but usually when a dictator dies, his minions scurry around trying to figure out what to do. It took Soviet authorities days to admit the death of Stalin... in todays world, it will be much harder for them to keep the truth secret.

For all the evil acts he committed, I'm struck now by how he was NOT perceived as a pariah by much of the media in the world.

We shall soon bear witness to the Palestinian reaction to his death. The eyes of the world are upon Palestine...

2004-11-04T11:40:00.000-05:00

Spammers Convicted, Sentenced to Hard Time

The State of Virginia has handed down a major conviction to two spammers who sent millions of unwanted emails to people throughout the US.

Let's look at the amount of damage they've done to society and measure it against their sentences.

Assuming they sent out 2,000,000 spam emails, which took up 5 seconds of productivity a piece (time spent high-lighting and deleting email), from every individual they spammed, they deprived Americans of about 4 total months of productivity. This 4 months is the total amount of time that Americans spent tackling the 2,000,000 spams they sent. As much as I despise Spammers, their 9 year sentences are grossly unfair for such a minor crime.

When you compound this with the fact that they were only convicted for sending 10,000 spam emails, the sentence becomes even more ludicrous.

I think something in the range of 12-18 months would be far more appropriate. Hopefully their sentences will be reduced given the relative harmlessness of their crimes.

Read the whole story here at the washington Times.

2004-11-04T10:04:00.000-05:00

Arafat In Coma, Near Death

The man responsible for the recruitment of women and children to act as human bombs... responsible for the murder of countless civilians... responsible for the murder of the Israeli athletes at the Munich 1972 Olympics... for the most recent infifada, and for scores of other crimes- is near death in a Parisian hospital. I'm not sure if it's a lifetime of bad karma, an ailing body filled with hate, or just French Medical Care, but the "President" of Palestine lies near death in Paris.

Israel showed great pause and calm- as it withstood the attacks this criminal sent in waves against it- as it allowed Arafat to live and execute his orders.

Arafat appointed two Prime Ministers since the 2000 Intifada began; acquiescing to the call of Western leaders to cede some control of the Palestinian Authority to another party. When these two Prime Ministers tried to make peace with Israel, Arafat fired them and undermined their authority.

Arafat has been the biggest obstacle to reaching a long-term peace between Israel and a hopeful Palestinian State. With Arafat's death, comes hope. The situation certainly couldn't get any worse, so even pessimists have reason to believe peace might now be within reach.

I hope Arafat goes quickly and quietly, and that the Palestinians realize that time was his greatest enemy- not the Israelis. G-d willing, may someone with authority in that fledgling nation have the foresight to make peace, and the charisma to unite their country behind that effort.

Update:

Damn! I had a problem with the Blogger site, and this article posted 4 Times! Please excuse the redudant postings, which have been deleted.

2004-11-04T06:53:00.000-05:00

Michael Moore's Relevance...

Is up for sale on Ebay at this auction; the seller says "his relevance is the second smallest part Michael Moore has left." The sale is for whatever relevance he still has seven days from the start of the auction. I imagine there will be little left at that point, but the bidding is up pretty high.

I saw this linked on Fark. The same guy is also selling Bruce Springsteen's ego.

...Those guys are total bitches. I hope they like the election results.

2004-11-03T05:38:00.000-05:00

BUSH WINS

Sweet Jesus, thank you G-D! As of right now Bush is leading in Ohio by 150,000 votes- this despite the massive voter fraud in Ohio; that I mentioned within the past week.

My wife makes a valid point though- it's certain that Kerry will follow Al Gore's awful example and will not concede quickly; this despite the fact that Bush leads in the total overall vote- and the margins he leads by in the "close states" are greater than that in 2000.

Certainly, the actions of Michael Moore and George Soros have gone to bear no fruit; a just end to two liars who the public will judge in the months to come.

Bush wins despite the fear campaign waged by the Main Stream Media, which worked so hard to unseat him. Dan Rather, are you listening? Your time comes soon old man, I can't imagine you'll be able to live with your failure much longer- and certainly your network won't want to keep your irrelevant ass around too much longer. You failed to bring enough muck onto our President with your lies; quit while you can still bring an ounce of dignity to your profession- and admit your mistake.

2004-11-02T21:46:00.000-05:00

Dutch Film-maker Killed

I don't know how this can happen in the Netherlands, that country has gun control laws! I thought hate-crime and murder only happened in the US, or at least that's what the European press tells everyone.

We all know that violent crime can't take place in countries with gun control laws, yet it does... continually... and in countries like the United Kingdom - it's skyrocketing out of control...

I think I like my 2nd Ammendment rights just fine, Mr. Leftist.

2004-11-02T16:17:00.000-05:00

Conservative Blogs Under Denial of Service Attack

It appears as if there is a concerted DOS attack underway to at least the following conservative websites. I first noticed the attack at about 3pm EST today 11/02.

Instapundit

Little Green Footballs

Cox and Forkum

Power Line

This is pretty dirty... I hope we can find out who was responsible...

UPDATE...

FYI- I first heard the story at Wonkette, who posted the story she read at 6:01 AM. I must give credit, where credit is due.

In any case, the problem seems to have cleared itself up.

For the sake of dispelling partisan rumors- I did check Daily Kos when the DOS seemed underway- and I could connect to that site just fine.

2004-10-31T14:16:00.000-05:00

Leftist College Professor Kicks Student for Wearing Republican Shirt

In a stunning display of partisan bigotry, Fort Lewis College (CO) college professor Maria Spero kicked Republican Mark O'Donnell for showing off his College Republicans sweatshirt at an off-campus event. She later apologized for the incident, but O'Donnell felt the apology wouldn't go far enough; and frankly- I agree. Given the draconian speech codes used against non-Leftists at college campuses across the nation, I think O'Donnell should push HARD for the dismissal of Professor Spero.

For more on the story, click on this link.

2004-10-29T21:59:00.000-04:00

OBL: Bush is a Bad President, US Should Elect Someone Else

In what amounts to a ringing endorsement of Democratic Presidential Candidate John Kerry, Osama bin Laden slammed President Bush- and blamed Bush for the high number of casualties on 9/11. Bin Laden stated...

"It never occurred to us that the commander-in-chief of the American armed forces would leave 50,000 of his citizens in the two towers to face these horrors alone," he said, referring to the number of people who worked at the World Trade Center.

"It appeared to him (Bush) that a little girl's talk about her goat and its butting was more important than the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers. That gave us three times the required time to carry out the operations, thank God," he said.

Yeah, because... like, you know- Bush flew the planes into the buildings and stuff. (sarcasm)

As far as I'm concerned, this is just another reason TO vote for Bush.

2004-10-28T16:26:00.000-04:00

Flu Pandemic Update

Russian Expert Dmitry Lvov, head of the Russian Virology Institute brings us the cheery news that we are on the brink of a major avian-influenza pandemic which could claim the lives of up to 1-Billion people.

Read the story here at MosNews.

2004-10-28T11:04:00.000-04:00

Another Vandalizing Democrat Arrested for Trampling Free Speech

In an article posted at WRAL.com, and linked at the Drudge Report, we find another enraged and unbalanced Democrat has taken it upon himself to trample on the free-speech of Republicans by stealing their Bush/Cheney signs. Here's the full story...

RALEIGH, N.C. -- A Wake County man says he caught a campaign sign stealer on tape.

Bill Moore, of north Raleigh, said his free speech was trampled when three different sets of Bush-Cheney signs were swiped from his yard in less than a week.

"I was a little upset that people were stealing other people's property," Moore said.

As a result, Moore and his friend, Brent Sullivan, took action. They staked out in the woods armed with a video camera. Within an hour, they caught 59-year-old Edward Shook ripping up signs.

The men gave chase as Shook drove off. With video proof and a license plate number, Wake County deputies arrested Shook for misdemeanor larceny.

"It's ridiculous," Shook said as he left the courthouse. "It's litter."

In the hotly contested election season, political passions are crossing the line. Thieves stole computers from a Bush office in Washington state. In Ohio, burglars did the same at Kerry headquarters. A hidden camera caught some men tearing down a Bush sign.

"Whether it's pro-Bush, pro-Kerry, pro-Nader, the fact of the matter is they can express what they want and they shouldn't have their property stolen or removed or damaged," Moore said.

After checking the law, Moore made a point to place his signs beyond the 10-foot easement on his property. Shook was released on $800 bond.

Thinking about the small number of people who have been caught, and all of the people who have complained of suffering this same type of abuse- you have to know this is more widespread than is being reported; and sadly- it hasn't been reported at ALL by the Main Stream Media.

2004-10-27T17:08:00.000-04:00

Arafat Dead?

Big Media hasn't reported it yet, in fact- I'm not sure if the Palestinian Authority has made a comment, but these initial news flashed when looked at from afar seem to indicate that Arafat may be dead.

It sure couldn't hurt the peace process if someone else stepped up on behalf of Palestine.

Read the Reuters article here...

2004-10-27T15:00:00.000-04:00

Democratic Activist Arrested for Stealing Bush Signs

These last two picks Definitely represent the Poster Children for Democratic Rage.

Here's the "ladies" story, if you're interested.

Fabiola Armitage is back on television, only instead of a campaign ad the focus has been on her mugshot.

Armitage is a Kerry supporter and a strong believer in stem cell research. She's featured in an advertisement urging Floridians to vote against Amendment 3 on this year's ballot. The amendment would cap how much money a lawyer can make from a medical malpractice lawsuit.

St. Johns County Sheriff Deputies arrested Armitage for grand theft and battery this week. They say she had 78 campaign signs supporting George Bush and Mel Martinez in her trunk.

Nice... the Icing on the Cake is that she was a Kerry spokeswoman who did commercials in Florida for his campaign. That's really classy!

2004-10-27T14:08:00.000-04:00

Democrat Goon Arrested for Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon for Intimidation Attempt on Republicans

In the CLEAREST CASE YET illustrating just how LOW the Democrats have gotten this election year, a Florida man was arrested by Sarasota police for driving his car toward Florida Congresswoman Katherine Harris in an attempt to intimidate and scare campaigning Republicans.

The Smoking Gun has it all.

OCTOBER 27--A Florida man has been charged with attempting to run over controversial Republican congresswoman Katherine Harris with his Cadillac. According to the below Sarasota Police Department report, Barry Seltzer, 46, told cops that he was simply exercising his "political expression" when he drove his car at Harris and several supporters, who were campaigning last night at a Sarasota intersection. Seltzer--pictured at right in a booking photo--allegedly drove up on a sidewalk and headed directly for Harris before swerving "at the last minute." Harris told officers that "she was afraid for her life and could not move as the vehicle approached her," according to the report. For his part, Seltzer--who's a registered Democrat--told cops, "I intimidated them with the car. They were standing in the street." He added, "I did not run them down, I scared them a little!" That explanation did not stop investigators from arresting Seltzer for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a felony. Harris, Florida's former secretary of state, is best known for her role in the aftermath of the state's disastrous 2000 presidential election.

This is indefensible, inexcusable and becoming a common theme among registered-Democrats.

2004-10-27T08:00:00.000-04:00

Democrats Continue to Harrass and Intimidate Republicans

The Democrats are really afraid of losing the election, and are going to drastic and violent steps to vent their anger and frustration against would-be Bush voters. Not surprisingly their campaign of violence against Republicans has escaped attention in the mass-media, where media figures have made their support for John Kerry starkly clear.

Intimidation against Republicans in CO

Permanent life lessons tend to evolve quickly from life-threatening intimidation, and that’s something intimidators throughout history have counted on. Fast-forward to present-day America in the grip of yet another scorched-earth presidential election, and the same tactics are being used to cow those whose views a certain rabid element finds objectionable.

Locally, Bush-Cheney and other Republican campaign signs have been burned, chain-sawed and simply stolen... he most starkly sinister anti-Bush messages are the large 4-by-8 foot torched and blackened Bush/Cheney sign that still stands near Wolcott, and the two back-to-back signs with their centers sawed out, located in Avon off the I-70 exit overlooking Wal-Mart.

When Eagle County Bush-Cheney co-chair Henri Stone, wife of County Commissioner Tom Stone, called local violence against Bush-Cheney and other Republican campaign signs “Hitler’s brown-shirt tactics” she was roundly chastised for over-dramatizing the events’ significance by invoking the Nazi era. But similar events happening across the nation vindicate her position, she says.

On Sept. 30, the same day Debbie Marquez released her statement, the Vail Daily noted that no signs promoting Democrats John Kerry or Ken Salazar had been reported damaged.

…and Florida

On Election Day, voters will be protected from campaign pressures by a 50-foot cone, an invisible barrier that campaign workers cannot breach. Not so for early voters.

While the Voter's Bill of Rights in state law says they have a right to "vote free from coercion or intimidation by elections officers or any other person," a glitch in the newer early voting law does not include the same 50-foot guarantee.

As a result, with early voting taking place in busy public places like City Halls and libraries, voters are voicing complaints of being blocked by political mobs, or being singled out for their political views. Others say they have been grabbed, screamed at and cursed by political partisans of all stripes.

Republican Rep. Tom Feeney of Oviedo said the antagonizers are "Kerry thugs" out to harass Bush voters.

"If you ask me whether I believe there is an organized effort to intimidate Republican voters, the answer is absolutely yes," said Feeney.

The Republican Party is calling on the secretary of state's office for help, asking that early voting rules be clarified.

Permits in Palm Beach County show that the SEIU union and other Democratic groups have been holding rallies at early voting locations, where they have a captive audience of voters standing in line. Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore said the lines are long because voters are brought in by the busload.

"Special interest groups are trying to whip everybody into a frenzy and get everybody upset," she said. "Campaigns and their observers are confronting the workers and the voters. Things have gotten nasty and ugly."

One woman who voted early in Boca Raton, at the Southwest County Regional Library, complained that as she stood in line, two men behind her were "trashing our president," Fletcher said, declining to identify the woman. She tried to ignore them. Then the man touched her arm and said, "Who are you voting for?"

"I said, `I don't think that's an appropriate question,'" the woman said she responded.

"Uh oh! We have a Bush supporter here," screamed the man behind her.

For the 2 1/2 hours she had to wait in line, she was heckled by the man. As they neared the voting room, someone in the rear of the line yelled, "I sure hope everyone here is voting for Kerry!" she reported.

That's when the man behind her held his hand over her head and screamed, "We have a Republican right here!" There were "boos and jeers" from the crowd.

"I felt intimidated, harassed and threatened!" the woman wrote in her complaint to the Republican Party.

Violence against Republicans in OR

Someone smashed the windows of the Multnomah County Republican office in Southeast Portland on Thursday, perhaps the latest sign some Oregonians have tossed out civility in their zeal to put their man in the White House.

The incident joins growing examples of mayhem swirling around an election dominated by the heated race between President Bush and Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry -- including arrests for sign thefts and physical tussles at rallies.

"Any Bush supporter will tell you the various levels of disdain from co-workers and complete strangers when they assert they're Republican, that level of disdain was nowhere near this in 2000," Donaldson said. "I'm not saying we are without fault, but these efforts to try to intimidate us and frighten us . . . it really upsets me."

Vandalism and intimidation against Republicans in CA

A political frenzy spurred by the upcoming presidential election that has commanded nationwide attention has made its way to San Benito County, with the destruction and theft of Republican presidential campaign signs.

Sometime between Oct. 12 and Oct. 16 unknown suspects vandalized a large Bush/Cheney campaign sign posted in the 700 block of McCray Street, spraying vulgarities denouncing the president, according to a Hollister police report.

Volunteers found the sign on Saturday, Oct. 16 and immediately took it down, said Jeannie Glass, San Benito County Republican Party volunteer.

Including several obscenities splashed across Bush and Cheney’s name, at the bottom the vandals sprayed the “F” word followed by the words Texas and Florida.

“To combine that word with Florida and Texas, someone understood the past election and where Bush is from, which is what made it interesting,” Glass said. “It wasn’t just kids.”

Several days later they noticed there was also a foot print on the sign, which meant someone had taken the large 4-by-8-foot sign down, sprayed the vulgarities on it and then put it back up, she said.

Now the sign hangs in the front window of the local GOP headquarters on San Benito Street, with pieces of paper labeled “censored” across the swear words and “compliments of a Kerry supporter” taped to the top.

Other than some signs being blown over in the wind, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hasn’t had any problems with their signs being stolen or vandalized, said Jeanie Wallace, San Benito County Central Committee chairperson.

It's nice to see that Democrats are living up to their creed of being "tolerant" and "open-minded."

I hope Bush wins Big!

2004-10-26T19:11:00.000-04:00

More Nice Shooting

An intruder made the stupid mistake of forcing his way into Dale McCard's home- attacking him and his 7-year-old daughter with pepper spray.

Mr. McCard went into his bedroom to get his gun, and defended his family and property from the home-invader.

The local police and the county coroners office later came to pick up the assailant's body.

Nice shooting Mr. McCard!

You can read more about the story--> here.

2004-10-22T22:52:00.000-04:00

Fine Shootin', My Man

A double congratulations goes to Robert J. Clark Jr. of New Jersey, and the Gloucester County Grand Jury which refused to indict him for shooting and killing the would-be thief who tried to steal his ATV.

For the full story, read this article from Home News Tribune. Now, I pray he won't be sued by the losers family.

2004-10-21T11:39:00.000-04:00

Kerry Will Tear Country Apart if the Election is Close

It appears that if the election is even close, let alone disputed, John Kerry may claim victory and throw the country back into partisan death throes. Read this article from the Philadelphia Daily News, and judge for yourself whether Kerry is planning a massive assault on any unfavorable news on November 3rd.

IF IT'S really close, declare victory.

If there's a recount, start appointing your Cabinet.

John Kerry is drawing up a battle plan for the wee hours of Nov. 3 and beyond, if the race is in doubt as it was in 2000.

The Associated Press is reporting the Democrat's campaign has a detailed plan to avoid some of the mistakes they believe undercut Al Gore during the Florida recount four years ago - when no one was prepared for the murky outcome.

How detailed?

The AP says six so-called "SWAT teams" of lawyers and political operatives will be situated around the country with fueled-up jets awaiting Kerry's orders to speed to a battleground state. The teams have been told to be ready to fly on the evening of the election to begin mounting legal and political fights. Every battleground state will have a SWAT team within an hour of its borders.

The Kerry campaign has recount office space in every battleground state, with plans so detailed they include the number of staplers and coffee machines needed to mount legal challenges.

"Right now, we have 10,000 lawyers out in the battleground states on Election Day, and that number is growing by the day," said Kerry adviser Michael Whouley.

Coupled with the massive Democratic voter fraud, and the policy of claiming racial disenfranchisement- even if none exists- it seems obvious that this country will be dragged through hell in November- unless either candidate wins outright.

2004-10-21T09:58:00.000-04:00

Detroit News: Bush Leads Kerry in Michigan

I wish this was true, but given the amount of other polls which show completely the opposite trends- I find it hard to believe that Bush leads Kerry in Michigan. Will I vote for George Bush, HELL YES! Will a LOT of people vote for Bush, ABSOLUTELY! Have the Republicans consistently gotten 42+% in the state since the 70's, WITHOUT A DOUBT... but the likelihood of a Bush victory here is slim. Good God, please let it be true!

Here's the Detroit News story from this mornings paper, written by Charlie Cain and Mark Hornbeck.

President Bush has moved ahead of Democratic challenger John Kerry in Michigan, according to a Detroit News poll, but hasn’t reached the critical 50 percent support plateau — suggesting the state remains in contention as the presidential race draws to a close.

In the initial installment of a poll that regularly will track voter sentiment in the final two weeks of the campaign, Bush held a 47 percent to 43 percent lead over the Massachusetts senator. The incumbent president’s lead is well within the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points. The statewide poll of 400 likely voters was taken Monday and Tuesday.

Most recent polls have shown Kerry with a narrow lead in Michigan. A Detroit News poll in June had the candidates virtually tied, with Bush at 44 percent and Kerry at 43 percent.

“This poll clearly demonstrates that Michigan will be very close,” said Steve Mitchell, an East Lansing-based pollster who conducted the survey. “I am surprised; a lot of other polling has shown Kerry in the lead.”

Michigan went for Democrat Al Gore four years ago and hasn’t favored a Republican presidential candidate since the elder George Bush beat Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis in 1988.

This state is widely seen as one of 10 battleground states across the country. The winner claims Michigan’s 17 electoral votes. Political experts say Kerry must take Michigan to win the election. Should Bush win a majority here, he’ll likely cruise to a comfortable victory...

Poll participants increasingly single out the economy as the most pressing issue facing the state. Jobs and the economy were named by 43 percent of respondents in January, and 48 percent in June. In this week’s polling, nearly six in 10 put the economy No. 1. No other issue even reached double digits...

Michigan’s unemployment rate inched up to 6.8 percent last month, well above the national average of 5.4 percent. The state has lost nearly 200,000 manufacturing jobs over the past four years — including 6,000 last month.

When asked whether the economy or homeland security was the most important national issue, 46 percent picked jobs and 44 percent said national security.

Kerry was favored by 62 percent of those who said the economy was most important. Bush is backed by 71 percent of those who say national security issues are most important.

Bush has a commanding 18-point lead among men, but Kerry leads by seven points among women.

In Metro Detroit, Kerry held a 48 percent to 41 percent lead while Bush led outstate, 51 percent to 38 percent. Kerry is expected to do well in the city of Detroit, while Bush needs to take Oakland and Macomb counties and turn out his base on the west side of the state to win.

Kerry had a 49 percent to 42 percent edge among union households, while Bush led 49 percent to 40 percent among non-union homes. Union foot soldiers for the UAW and AFL-CIO are aggressively campaigning on Kerry’s behalf.

Among Protestant voters, Bush led 52 percent to 39 percent, and Catholics favor the president 51 percent to 39 percent. Infrequent church-goers generally favor Kerry, while those who regularly attend worship services generally back Bush.

Those who identify themselves as pro-life support Bush, 66 percent to 26 percent. Those who say they are pro-choice back Kerry, 59 percent to 30 percent. Right to Life of Michigan is working phone banks and going door-to-door for Bush. Kerry is supported by the Michigan Abortion Rights Action League and Planned Parenthood...

If their data is correct, and the others are wrong- than there are Serious polling problems with the other polls, and there is NO WAY Kerry can win the election...

2004-10-20T19:57:00.000-04:00

Evidence of Democratic Vote Scam in Ohio

According to this article at the Cincinnati Enquirer, there is a lot of mounting evidence that "independent" organizations charged with "get-out-the-vote" operations for the Democratic party in Ohio have perpetrated fraud, and have registered THOUSANDS of phony voters for the upcoming election.

Thousands of cards mailed by county election boards to newly registered voters in Hamilton County and throughout the state are being returned because the people can't be found.

John Williams, director of the Hamilton County Board of Elections, said the situation indicates that there might not be as many new voters as some expect in a state deemed crucial in the presidential election.

Ohio Republican Party Chairman Robert Bennett on Tuesday said it's a result of statewide registration fraud conducted by independent groups that support Democratic candidates.

"By most accounts, their work can only be considered sloppy, haphazard and, in some cases, downright illegal," Bennett said, noting that the state party plans to take out full-page ads in Ohio newspapers encouraging citizens to stop voter fraud.

Democratic Party spokesman Dan Trevas said the fraud uncovered in Ohio equates to "minor errors" when viewed in the bigger picture.

"The vast majority of those registered for the first time are intent on voting," he said.

Bennett cited instances in 10 counties where potentially fraudulent voter registration forms were submitted.

He said many were submitted by groups he terms "auxiliaries of the Democratic Party": the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and America Coming Together.

The groups paid people to register voters. Some registrations were filled out for dead people, some contained fake addresses, and others named fiction characters such as Dick Tracy and Mary Poppins.

Jess Goode, spokesman for ACT in Ohio, has denied wrongdoing by his group. He said the Republican Party is scared of the number of new Democratic voters headed to the polls in two weeks.

An estimated 7.9 million people have registered in Ohio, up from 7.1 million at the beginning of the year.

Williams is currently investigating fraud by someone working for ACORN who he said submitted voter registrations for about 35 people who don't exist.

Newly registered voters in Hamilton County are mailed a card telling them where to vote and what political districts they live in. But thousands of those cards were returned because the people, or the addresses listed on voter registration forms, couldn't be found.

"There is quite a number," Williams said, noting that not every returned card is a suspected case of fraud. "People do actually move.''

State GOP records, confirmed by Williams, show that through Oct. 4, Hamilton County mailed 63,403 cards to new registrants, and 4,152 were returned - a rate of 6.6 percent.

The number was third-highest in the state behind Cuyahoga County's 14,461 and Franklin's 6,917, according to GOP records. In Butler County, 255 cards mailed to new voters were returned, while 24 were returned in Warren County, according to GOP records. Clermont County numbers were not available.

Tim Burke, chairman of the Hamilton County Democratic Party and the county elections board, said an updated number of cards returned is 5,808 out of 150,000 mailed not only to new voters, but also to those changing addresses, for a return rate of less than 4 percent.

Burke said fraud makes up a small percentage of the hundreds of thousands of newly registered voters in Ohio.

"I think Republicans are attempting to justify what they intend to do on Election Day by raising questions of voter fraud and overplaying this," he said.

What both the Democratic and Republican parties in Ohio intend to do is use a 51-year-old law that allows them to place challengers at polling sites. The parties are recruiting lawyers, law students and others to ensure that people are allowed to vote, or to potentially challenge voters' eligibility.

Bennett said his efforts are likely to focus on heavily Democratic areas where many new voters have been registered. Democrats expect to match the effort.

As further evidence of registration fraud, Bennett said the Ohio Republican Party sent out its own letters to newly registered Ohio voters, encouraging them to vote Republican.

In the counties where new registration was highest, 3 percent to 9 percent of the letters were returned because the people were not located.

"I can say ... as someone who's been in state politics for 40 years, that the normal rate of return is less than 1 percent," he said. "These results are really unprecedented and frightening."

Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, joined Bennett Tuesday and said Ohio's issues of voter registration fraud cases are alarming and part of a national problem.

"Whether it's for profit motive or political motive, fraud is being committed in the registration process in a way that makes more possible fraud on Election Day," he said.

"I'll bet you this. If Mary Poppins and Dick Tracy vote on Election Day, they'll vote for John Kerry."

Real nice. I'll follow this as it develops.

2004-10-20T13:42:00.000-04:00

Absolutely Unacceptable Breach of Church/State Separation

Will someone please try to make an argument here about how THIS is acceptable in a Public school in the United States?

In Herndon, during this month of Ramadan (which began Friday), there will be explanations of the fasting month and “role-playing” that requires students to recite Muslim sacred words and imitate their prayer practices. However, whether the speaker understands what he is saying or not, one is considered to have converted to Islam if he confesses a belief in Allah – and this conversion is considered irrevocable. The penalty for apostasy (and much else, from adultery, to homosexuality, to dating anyone in the Islamic world aside from the intended partner of arranged marriages, often made between first cousins) is death.

Multicultural trainer Syeed explains, “For teachers and administrators, as well as fellow students, explaining Ramadan helps the school accommodate the religious requirements of the holiday.” Why American children should be strong-armed into imposing “the religious requirements of the holiday” for proselytizing Muslims isn’t addressed. Neither do authorities explain why Islamic prayers have suddenly become part of the curriculum for children attending American public (e.g., non-sectarian) schools, while discussions of Christianity are ruled off limits.

Where is the ACLU's furious denouncement of this program, which has young children praying in schools? Why is this acceptable, and who at this school thought this was a good idea?

This is a clear double-standard, where Christians are punished for wearing their religion on their sleeve, but teachers are allowed to force their pupils to recite prayers in Arabic! This has to be put to an immediate end.

2004-10-20T10:27:00.000-04:00

Prescience

November 3, 2004 (New York) by Lefty Muqr al Qer

Dozens of Democratic party field offices today have leveled charges of widespread voter intimidation tactics by Republican operatives throughout the country. Citing hundreds of cases of voter intimidation against African Americans, Democratic operatives have pressed that charges be brought against Republican leaders in several states, including New York.

I had the chance to interview Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry MacAuliffe earlier today, and he stated, "Would-be Democratic voters throughout the country, especially African American voters, have been targeted by an evil predatory Republican scheme to disenfranchise them and mute the voices they are entitled to in our representative democracy. Clearly we are dealing with a widespread conspiracy, perpetrated by the Bush administration to shut Black voters out of Democratic process."

In a joint press conference earlier today, former Democratic Presidential hopefuls Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton issued the following statements. "Together, we feel that the Republican leadership in this country has failed the black peoples. We hope that an immediate investigation will be launched, and that re-votes will take place to allow those black voters affected by this heinous harrassment, to end the indignation which our people have suffered. If re-votes are not allowed, we can not be held responsible for the damage which will follow."

When Republican National Committee Chairman Mark Racicot was asked to comment on the affair, his office released the following statement.

We've known for months that if the Democrats lost the election we would be dealing with such false accusations. The Democratic National Committee pledged months ago that they would cite voter harrassment, even if none took place. In fact, a guidebook released by the DNC to Colorado DNC leaders recommended to cite voter harrassment- especially of Black voters- even if no harrassment took place. We have no reason to believe the claims are accurate, but we take them seriously and will make every effort to cooperate with the FEC and other investigators to investigate the claims and prove them false."

Concluding the interview with DNC Chairman MacAuliffe, he stated, "We plan on contesting the election results in every state we lost, pushing the case as far as we can to prove that John Kerry was the real winner, and moving to invalidate the results of this election- where millions of citizens were unfairly disenfranchised."

2004-10-19T20:22:00.000-04:00

Political Musings, Part 3

The “Wars” on xxxxx I’m against any un-winnable war that the government engages in. An un-winnable war is a war where there is no clear final objective. For example… World War 2 had an achievable final military objective: wage war on the Axis powers until they are destroyed, dismantled and cannot rise up to make war again. The US can win that war, because we know what the threat is- fascism, and we know what steps we needed to take to conclude the war- true peace from the Axis powers and a formal renouncement of hostilities.

The “Wars” on xxxxx are un-winnable because there are no clearly defined achievable victories. When will the Wars on “Drugs,” “Terror” and “Poverty” be concluded? What metrics are there to define victory in these wars?

The Drug War… What a folly. Drugs have never been a bigger business in this country, and organized crime has never benefited more from the worldwide prohibition on drugs. The Drug War has produced powerful international networks of shadowy criminal enterprises. For all the money we spend on fighting this war, our leaders never acknowledge that we’re not winning. Wouldn’t the vast sums of money we spend be better-off going into programs to fight drug addiction? Wouldn’t the criminal gangs be destroyed if we found a way to regulate the drug trade, rather than fight it?

The War on Poverty… Another folly, this one abandoned to a great degree. In an economic system where merit leads to earned income, there will always be those of lower merit who will earn less and descend into poverty. I would argue that government programs to benefit them are proven ineffective in ending generational poverty, and rather a return to charitable networks would be a better alternative to providing aid and training to the needy.

The War on Terror… I support the absolute destruction of terrorist networks throughout the world, but feel we have to engage in one battle at a time. We have given the Bush administration unique powers in fighting terrorism, but unless the people demand that clear goals be set, I cannot imagine that any future President would ever abandon the newly granted powers, and thus- the War on Terror would never end.

I think the United States shouldn’t be afraid to take an aggressive stand in protecting its self interests, but it shouldn’t do so without an absolutely clear picture of what the problems are, and whenever US forces are deployed in an invasion- the President should be forced to seek the approval of Congress. We used to make Presidents declare war, but Harry Truman ended that trend when he deployed US forces to Korea. Ever since, no President has ever taken the step of declaring formal war. The closest anyone ever came was George H.W. Bush before the first Gulf War, when he did receive Congressional approval to deploy troops- just not to declare war.

In any case, I don’t favor grandiose, sweeping, “Wars” without end.

Intelligence I believe the US should continue to invest heavily in its Intelligence capabilities. Never at any previous point in history has our ability to fully understand the worlds other countries been so crucial to our safety and security. I feel that we are doing a great job in funding our Informational Intelligence programs- electronic surveillance, electronic warfare, and space imaging- but feel we should increase the budgets for our human intelligence gathering forces.

There are some changes I would make at the upper-most levels of administration… I would make the DCI and the heads of the NSA, DIA, and NRO directly accountable to the National Security Director. I would also force departmental directors of various branches- those with similar missions- to meet together at least once a week to join in committee to discuss pertinent intelligence which their agencies gathered. Hopefully by meeting together outside of their usual organizational bureaucracy, they would be able to better respond and to more quickly recognize emerging threats.

2004-10-19T14:46:00.000-04:00

Kofi Annan: US Must Make Friends and Kill Insurgents

While commenting on the coalitions crackdown on Iraqi insurgency in Fallujah, Kofi Annan made the following comments regarding the American led campaign.

"In these kind of situations you have two wars going on," he said. "You have the war for minds and hearts of the people as well as efforts to try and bring down the violence.

"The two have to go together and it has to be calibrated in such a way that you are able to move the people along with you ... I hope that approach is also the one that is being pursued by the government and others," he told a news conference with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

Annan typically codes his public-speech by using such lush flowerly language. If you decode his verbose phrasiology- what he is actually saying is...

"After a country illegally invades another, they have two battles," he said. "First you have the war to try to make friends where you can as well as the war to kill the insurgents."

"The two have to go together and they have to work so that you don't piss off too many people ... I hope that they use this approach."

That's kind of a given, isn't it?

2004-10-19T08:57:00.000-04:00

Finally!

After years of dawdling, police in the United Kingdom have arrested Abu Hamza al-Masri on charges of inciting racial hatred and calling for the murder of non-Moslems. Al-Masri was the Imam of London's notorious Finsbury Park mosque, which was an Al Qaeda recruiting center throughout his tenure. Several of the September 11th hijackers were recruited from the Finsbury Park mosque throughout the 1990's, and most experts blame al-Masri for the rise of racial tensions in the Finsbury Park neighborhood.

Al-Masri, a modern monster with a fake-eye and hooks for hands, is an Egyptian-born mujahideen who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980's, and whose sermons have praised Osama bin Laden and called for violence against the United States, Israel, and Jews everywhere.

Al-Masri was removed as Imam of the Mosque in early 2003, but continued to preach outside the Mosque in protest against the leaders there who ousted him.

The British police were apparently reluctant to arrest him- for fear of stirring up passions among London's Moslem population. However, as the US began indictment proceedings to try him in the United States, the British police arrested al-Masri to keep him in their custody.

Hopefully this will be the start of a positive trend. Anyone who incites others to kill for their ideology is no better than a murderer themself.

For more information on al-Masri's arrest, read these stories from CBC News, Bloomberg News and the Scotsman.

2004-10-17T18:45:00.000-04:00

Russian & Georgian Conflict Imminent

I saw this one coming. According to Pravda, not exactly a credible news-source (but still...)- Russia and Georgia on verge of armed conflict.

The Foreign Affairs Ministry of Georgia issued a statement on Friday night, in which it was said that Russia had illegally deployed its military men and "armed groups of the Confederation of Caucasian mountain nations" in Abkhazia.

"There is reliable information, which says that Russia has deployed several special military teams in Abkhazia via the Abkhazian part of the border between Russia and Georgia. In addition, armed groups of the Confederation of Caucasian mountain nations are currently being concentrated in Abkhazia's capital Sukhumi. A lot of members of those groups conducted subversive activities in Shamil Basayev's terrorist groups in Abkhazia," the statement from the Georgian Foreign Affairs Ministry runs.

The Georgian ministry also set out its protest against the deployment of several hundreds of Russian military men in the republic of Abkhazia. In addition, spokesmen for the ministry called upon the Russian government to take measures to withdraw Russian military men from the republic and to refrain from any actions that could exacerbate the situation in the conflict area, Itar Tass reports.

Presumably they're upset about all the Chechen terrorists amassed in the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia, and the Georgian governments inability to remove the Chechens from the region.

Russia has to be able to defend itself. If the Georgians are unable to police their country, and remove the Chechens, than the Russians have to be able to defend their people from the terrorists. If Russia invades, it will be a big international incident, but I think the big players in the UN should back them on the police action- as long as they limit their presence to the Pankisi Gorge.

2004-10-16T17:09:00.000-04:00

The Most Hillarious Campaign Ad Ever

Looking back on historical campaign ads and the ads from this year, I've never seen a funnier ad than the "draft" ad at the Club for Growth. Purported to have been created by David Zucker, the creator of Airplane and the Naked Gun, it skeweres John Kerry's flip-flops in an outrageously funny way.

Check it out, and consider making a donation.

2004-10-16T10:21:00.000-04:00

Jon Stewart SHREDS Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson

In case you haven't heard, or witnessed the slaughter for yourself, Jon Stewart BLASTED the Crossfire guys live on tv yesterday. I'm not sure if I agree with his argument for their worthlessness, paraphrased as "you are shamless tools of the pols and big business media, who offer nothing to the public discourse but partisan soundbites and the incitement of partisan fury," but it's DAMN funny. You can tell he really hates those guys. He called tucker Carlson a "dick," and when he asked him how old he was, and Carlson responded- "35," he said, "you're 35 and you wear a bow-tie."

Priceless.

2004-10-15T13:19:00.000-04:00

Bush Pulls Ahead in the Zogby Tracking Poll

Most of the credible-scientific polls have had Bush ahead of Kerry since before the Republican National Convention, most of them, but not the Zogby poll- which was most accurate in predicting the exact outcome of the 2000 Election. The recent swing for Bush- who is not up by 4%, with a margin-of-error of less than 3%. This now means that Bush has support in every major poll.

Read the story at the Washington Times...

2004-10-15T11:45:00.000-04:00

Why I'm Voting for George W. Bush for President

Let's start off by getting one thing straight. I don't like the job that George W. Bush has done as President of the United States, and I know there are people out therre who I'd rather see represent me as President. If Colin Powell, Rudolph Guiliani, Gale Norton, Condoleeza Rice, Arlen Specter, Joe Lieberman, George Bush Sr, or James Baker were available- I'd choose them over W any day. They're not available, and given the alternative to Bush, I'm voting for George W. Bush on November 2nd.

Here's why.

When comparing the President to John Kerry, these 3 issues tip my lever-hand towards the W...

1. George W. Bush- Kills. Terrorists. Dead.

He doesn't give a shit what France or Germany thinks when it comes time to make judgement calls on how to best protect the US from foreign threats. He's done what he's needed to do to take the 'front' of the war-on-terror away from the US and to Iraq. As a result, many would-be crazies have flocked there- rather than here- and we are killing them by the hundreds. Better our well-trained military forces are dealing with them, than schools filled with surprised children.

2. George W. Bush supports 2nd Ammendment Rights, and John Kerry doesn't. John Kerry has done so much in attempts to harm 2nd Ammendment rights during his tenure in the Senate to make him the most Anti-2nd Ammendment Presidential Candidate EVER (according to this post at the NRA-ILA, which is well footnoted).

3. George W. Bush supports nominating "strict-constructionist" judges to the Supreme Court. "Strict-constructionist" judges Interpret law, they don't Make law. They read the constitution and interpret it literally, word-for-word to understand it's meaning, they don't play with the semantics or the "original intent" of the lawmakers, but actually follow the laws to the letter.

I don't want a Supreme Court justice nominated during a Kerry Presidency. I don't want any Federal Judges who will make a bunch of bullshit calls on important cases, based not on existing laws- but more on their own personal agenda. The last thing this country needs is another Federal judge willing to circumvent the legislature, who will do the job of Congress without Congress' accountability.

Simply put- John Kerry will continue to waffle on important security issues. He'll work to deprive honest Americans of their entitled 2nd Ammendment rights. And he'll nominate Federal Judges who will legislate from the bench, and who can make law by perverting their role to interpret law.

2004-10-13T19:47:00.000-04:00

Political Musings, Part 2

Abortion Rights- I believe that women have a fundamental inalienable right to control their bodies and should have the rights to terminate an unwanted pregnancy at will. Conversely, I believe that once a fetus has reached viability- meaning it can exist on its own without the mothers assistance- that baby should be considered a person and its right-to-life should be recognized. Practically speaking, I believe that 3rd trimester abortions should be illegal- unless the life of the mother is in jeopardy, and no recourse beside abortion can be found to provide safety for the mother.

I do not believe that public monies should be used to fund abortion or abortion clinics under any circumstances.

Affirmative Action- I believe in the spirit of affirmative action because I believe that there is inherently institutional racism still present in our country, and methods and practices have to be implemented and researched to help decrease the problems for minorities struggling to find success. Conversely, I feel that programs which draw lines of division based on race can only hurt racial harmony. Given that communities across the country deal with racial issues differently, and because there are different cultures present in different regions, I feel that if Affirmative Action programs are to be adopted- they should exist strictly at a state government level.

That said, I’m against federal Affirmative Action programs, but I support state-run Affirmative Action programs. I’m wholly against quota-based systems, but I have no problem with a public university taking individuals various backgrounds into consideration when considering granting them the opportunity to attend their school.

Patriot Act- I’m opposed to any government program which radically alters the federal governments already-broad investigatory powers. I’m WHOLLY opposed to the perpetual imprisonment of foreign nationals. I support sending back foreign nationals for prosecution in their country of origin, or their country of capture- rather than rotting forever in American jails with no hope of trial.

Death Penalty- I’m firmly opposed to the death penalty, unless a convicted criminal asks for the death penalty and consents. Even in cases of treason or crimes against humanity, the guilty party can be used more for study or show if they’re still alive, but does little to discourage others from perpetrating their crimes if they’re dead. I’d like to make an exception for Osama bin Laden, but I can even see him being useful if they put him in a gorilla cage for show at the WTC Memorial after we capture him or his remains.

2004-10-13T11:35:00.000-04:00

A Sound Strategy for Dealing with Foreign Combatants

After the failure of Bill Clinton's last-ditch attempt at creating a legacy of Middle Eastern peace between Palestine and Israel, Arafat- empowered by Ehud Barak's refusal to implement Clinton's plan- called for the 2000 Intifada.

Palestinian terror-groups backed by the Fatah movement and foreign governments Syria and Iran, began a bombing and killing spree the likes of which have not been seen in Israel since the 1970's. The Israelis, fearing for their security pushed the Likud coalition into power, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's IDF began a campaign which eventually quashed the Intifada.

The idea behind the Israeli's defense was to make the terrorists unpopular neighbors with the more "moderate" Palestinians. Sharon was and is a pragmatist. He knew he could never make the Palestinians 'like' the Israelis. After decades of intolerance and war towards the Jews, Sharon knew that the mindset of the average Palestinian was so hateful towards Jews that the Israelis- no matter what they did- could never become true friends with them; at least not in his lifetime. To try to placate Arafat would be suicide, because it became clear that the Palestinian Authority could never be placated, and neither could Israelis cordially hostile neighbors (Jordan and Egypt)- or their outright hostile neighbors (Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon...)

The Israelis took drastic steps to end the Intifada by unconventional means. The IDF focused on destroying the Palestinian populaces ability to tolerate the terrorists in their midsts. Wherever the IDF found a terrorist leader, they killed the leader and anyone stupid enough to be in his proximity. Wherever the IDF found a terrorist gathering, they killed all the terrorists they could, and anyone stupid enough to be cavorting with them. Wherever the IDF found terrorist weapons, terrorist safe-houses, or terrorist smuggling tunnels- the IDF would destroy the homes, the resources, and the property of the people assisting the terrorists.

Eventually, almost no one wanted to have their property destroyed- and the Intifada began to crack. As the knowledge sank into the mind of John Q. Palestinian that- if he was perceived as aiding or abetting the terrorists, his property and life was in danger- John Q. Palestinian began to chase the terrorists away. With the terrorists unable to operate in public, and without the popular support of the Palestinian people- the Intifada crumbled.

The Coalition Forces in Iraq are seeing the same type of situation in Fallujah. A few foreign terrorists in Fallujah have been attacking Coalition forces, and the Coalition forces have found that they can use the same strategy as the IDF to make them quite unpopular among Real Iraqis.

The Washington Times has a feature story about the effects of the US Campaign against foreign terrorists in Fallujah.

Fearful of a large-scale U.S. attack, native insurgents in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are turning against allied foreign fighters, the Washington Post said.

The disputes have spilled over into harsh words and sporadic violence, with Fallujans killing at least five foreign Arabs in recent weeks, witnesses told the newspaper.

"If the Arabs will not leave willingly, we will make them leave by force," said Jamal Adnan, a taxi driver who left his house after the house next door was bombed by U.S. aircraft targeting foreign insurgents.

It's a simple strategy, really, and quite effective.

True to President Bush's words, "There is no more effective threat to terrorists in Iraq, than the Iraqi people themselves."

You Go, George!

2004-10-12T09:03:00.000-04:00

Bush-Cheney Campaign Responds to AFL-CIO Violence

...Plus a breakdown of violence and vandalism commited against the Bush-Cheney Campaign.

I just wish I thought that it would do any good to dissuade these trolls from vandalizing lawn-signs, homes, cars, offices, and from injuring Republicans associated with the campaign, but I have a sneaking suspicion that these union-backed monsters will continue to wage violence against those associated with the Bush-Cheney campaign.

Mark Racicot, RNC Chairman, sends letter to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

Over the past several weeks, acts of violence and vandalism have occurred at Republican and Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters across the country.

I hope you will put an end to protest activities that have led to injuries, property damage, vandalism and voter intimidation. We will hold you and your organization accountable for the actions of your members and urge you to immediately discontinue any coordinated protest efforts that result in damage to our facilities, or injury to people who may hold different political views than your members...

Here's a breakdown of violence and crime committed against Bush backers since the start of this election cycle...

Drive-by shooting at Knoxville, TN Bush-Cheney campaign office.

Police estimated the shooting occurred sometime between 6:30 a.m. and 7:15 a.m.

One glass door was completely shattered, leaving police with no readily available evidence of how many rounds were fired into it. The second glass door bore a single hole that also pierced a blue Bush/Cheney sign taped to the glass.

Police had not recovered any of the rounds, so they were unable to speculate on the caliber of the weapon used, DeBusk said. It appears the shots were fired from a vehicle because of the upward trajectory of one round.

Democratic "Activist" assaults Bush-Cheney staffer.

A Democrat was charged with punching a local Republican leader and a life-sized cardboard cutout of President Bush, police said.

David Philip McCally, 55, was charged with misdemeanor battery and criminal mischief for the Thursday night scuffle.

McCally, an instructor at Sante Fe Community College, was headed to a restaurant when he stopped inside the nearby GOP headquarters and punched the presidential cutout.

"I don't like old brother George," McCally said. "Truthfully, I kind of did it lightheartedly. I was just walking over there to order chicken, and I saw the cutout and I just walked in there and punched it."

Horn followed McCally outside and the two exchanged words before fists flew again.

Police who drove into the area during the fight witnessed McCally throw what they later learned was the first punch.

Milwaukee Democrats Harrass Republicans, Trespass and Damage Property.

More than 50 demonstrators supporting Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry stormed a Republican campaign office in West Allis at mid-day today, trespassing, creating a disturbance...and then refusing to leave...

Graber called the latest incident part of a disturbing trend of criminal conduct by anti-Bush forces in Wisconsin, pointing to an incident in Madison last week in which Bush-Cheney yard signs were stolen from the yards of three homes. The vandals then used chemicals to burn swastikas into the lawns of the homes, which were within a two-block radius of one another.

In addition, reports of stolen, defaced and damaged Bush-Cheney campaign signs are surfacing throughout Wisconsin.

“Our volunteers, from children to the elderly, have every right to feel safe when they are working on behalf of a cause and candidates they believe in,” Graber commented. “This type of thuggish, intimidating conduct is absolutely unacceptable.

Bush-Cheney Office in West Virginia Shot(MSNBC Removes original story from their webpage. Hmm...)

Republican supporters in Huntington were watching their candidate accept the party's nomination when a gunshot rang out right in the middle of George W. Bush's speech.

"We heard a small snap, and felt glass come sliding by us.We looked up and saw a hole in our window and realized somebody was shooting at us", said Paula Stewart.

Witnesses tell police that someone fired a shot at the Republican Headquarters office at 1402 4th Avenue around 10:30pm Thursday night.

Twenty five people were inside facing the window, watching the speech on TV, when the shot was fire(sic).

Democrats Vandalize, Cut-Down and Burn Bush-Cheney Signs in Maryland.

The election-year ritual of political sign demolition took on added significance this year after reports of a sign being set on fire in front of an Ellicott City home, police spokeswoman Sherry Llewellyn said.

Police said they had not received reports of similar vandalism from the Democrats.

Police arrested Corey R. Cooke, 33, of Ellicott City on Sept. 24. Peter Lizon, 30, and his wife, Stephanie Louise Lizon, 34, of Randallstown were arrested Friday. All were charged with malicious destruction of property and were released on bond.

Bush-Cheney Signs Cut-Down in Nevada.

Dozens of Bush-Cheney Signs Destroyed in Louisiana.

Campaign of Vandalism Against Bush-Cheney Signs in Virginia.

Bush Signs Destroyed in Oregon.

Bush-Cheney Signs Vandalized in Colorado.

Gettysburg, PA Bush-Cheney office shot at, vandalized with rocks and beer bottles.

The list goes On-and-On; I could list pages and pages of this type of concerted effort to stomp out political speech. Apparently, the Democratic Party of "Peace" and "understanding" is neither peaceful nor understanding...

UPDATE:

Bush Campaign office in Spokane, WA Burglarized, Vandalized Last Night!

Offices that house President Bush's re-election campaign in Spokane were broken into and vandalized last night, the latest in a string of crimes at Republican offices across the country.

Workers arriving this morning found a hole smashed through the wall from an adjacent, vacant office. Bush campaign officials say a small amount of petty cash is missing and a computer and television had been moved and left near the hole.

"They must have gotten spooked because they ultimately left the computer and TV," said Bill Hyslop, the campaign's chairman for the Fifth Congressional District.

The computer and the TV had recently arrived in Spokane and the computer was loaded with information from the Republican get-out-the vote program.

Gotta love the widespread media attention that this has garnered... wait a minute! What widespread media attention? These stories have ALL been under-reported. If John Q. Public realized the absolute insanity of the Kerry supporters, they might be less willing to vote for him; and you KNOW the mainstream media won't do ANYTHING to hurt Kerry. (Hat tip, Instapundit)

2004-10-08T11:33:00.000-04:00

Embassy Bombing in Paris

I wonder if this bombing was motivated by people opposed to Prime Minister-elect Yudhoyono. Yudhoyono is a supporter of the US led effort demolish Islamist terrorism, and has been critical of zealous Moslem Imams in Indonesia. This could be seen as a signal from Islamist fundamentalists that they disapprove of the Indonesian electorates choice of leadership. From al Reuters at CNN...

PARIS, France -- A bomb that exploded outside the Indonesian Embassy in Paris has wounded 10 people, according to French police.

The explosive device was placed directly under the Indonesian flag, according to French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin.

De Villepin, who spoke to reporters near the blast site, called the bombing a criminal act and said it left a sizable crater.

He said he was aware of no specific threats against the embassy.

The explosion shattered windows in the upscale neighborhood across the Seine River from the Eiffel Tower early Friday and police have cordoned off the blast site, according to French media reports.

Radio station Europe-1 quoted firefighters as saying the explosion took place on the embassy's ground floor.

Rescue workers led several people from the scene, which was crowded with fire trucks and ambulances.

Indonesia is preparing to inaugurate a new leader, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, after President Megawati Sukarnoputri was defeated in an election last month.

Yudhoyono, a former general, won a landslide victory in the September 20 polls and is due to be inaugurated on October 20.

It was the first time the world's most populous Muslim nation had directly voted for their president.

The ballot was praised as a key step in the country's transition to democracy after the downfall of ex-dictator Suharto in 1998.

Yudhoyono called Friday's blast a terrorist act, Reuters news agency reported.

"I strongly condemn the terrorist act done at the Indonesian embassy in Paris. I do hope the government of France will take appropriate action to bring the perpetrator to justice," he told reporters.

"And I do hope also President Megawati, who is still in power now, (will) conduct appropriate action and good cooperation with the government of France," Reuters quoted him as saying.

Journalist Jim Bittermann contributed to this report

I'll be sure to follow this story as it develops. If it turns out that French Islamists were responsible, it could be an opportunity for the dhimmi government in Paris to make a crackdown, or it could become the start of a trend.

2004-10-08T08:53:00.000-04:00

UN Corruption and the Emerging Oil-for-Vetoes Scandal

It's becoming more-and-more clear that the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein unlawfully gave oil vouchers intended to feed starving children to corrupt French, Russian and Chinese politicians in exchange for their votes in the UN and their lobbying efforts against the sanctions and against US military threats.

As outlined in this wonderful article by Fraser Nelson at the Scotsman, Hussein attempted to subvert international justice and scrutiny by playing into the hands of corrupt UN diplomats.

SADDAM Hussein believed that the United Nations system was so corrupt that it would protect his dictatorship from American aggression and allow him to complete quickly his quest for weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Detail from the full Iraq Survey Group report...shows that Saddam was intending to resume his WMD programme as soon as UN sanctions were dropped.

His officials believed they could make WMD within two years - but the only flaw in their strategy was to think that Tony Blair and President George Bush would not invade Iraq without explicit UN permission.

Extraordinary detail from the report was reverberating around the world yesterday as the French government issued an angry denial that its ministers had privately assured Saddam they would use their UN veto to stop war in return for oil contracts.

...His strategy was to use Iraq’s vast oil reserves as a lever to pull apart the international community, by bribing Russian and French officials. The report shows this policy carried out to a breathtaking degree.

Given that only 15 of Iraq’s 73 proven oilfields were being developed, Saddam’s officials started to offer lucrative deals to Russian and French oil companies, while personally targeting politicians considered corrupt.

Jacques Chirac, the president of France, was top of the list. Some 11 million oil-for-food vouchers were allocated to a businessmen named Patrick Maugein, who was "considered a conduit to Chirac", according to the report.

It also claims that Saddam’s officials paid the equivalent of £600,000 to the ruling French Socialist Party - and that Baghdad’s then ambassador to Paris handed the money to Pierre Joxe, the then French defence minister.

Russia, another of the five countries with the power to veto war under the UN system, was heavily courted. Saddam’s officials dealt directly with the oil companies, who he deduced were quickly assuming political power.

"Iraqi attempts to use oil gifts to influence Russian policy-makers were on a lavish and almost indiscriminate scale," it says. He targeted a "new oligarch class" and also bribed Lukoil, the oil giant, with oil-for-food vouchers worth $10 million.

Peter Rodinov, Russia’s energy minister, went to Baghdad in 1997 to discuss a $12 billion oil deal. Two years later, Russian experts travelled to Iraq to provide advice on missile-guidance systems.

A third of all Iraqi contracts went to Russia in the end. Although Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, opposed the Iraq war, there is nothing to suggest that Saddam tried to bribe him or his aides.

...China, which also holds a UN veto, featured heavily in Iraqi contracts. Its companies supplied rocket guidance electronics to Iraq, "disguised as children’s computer software".

Tariq Aziz, the former Iraqi deputy prime minister, said he would have been "two years away from building a nuclear bomb".

Saddam, the report says, considered that the Desert Fox bombings of February 1998 would be the "worst he could expect from Western military pressure", because the UN system would stop the US carrying out any other action.

Even after the 11 September terrorist attacks, Saddam failed to realise that the mood in the United States had changed fundamentally. The first sign of worry came when Mr Bush included Iraq in his "axis of evil" speech.

Saddam argued that WMD was the cornerstone of his national security policy - shoring up his own authority among would-be insurgents - and dissuading Iran from making common cause with the Shiites in southern Iraq.

Primarily, he "believed that possession and willingness to use WMD contributed substantially to deterring the United States from going to Baghdad" after the first Gulf War.

It was for this reason that Saddam considered it so important to have the world believe that he still owned the weapons, even if he did not. The ISG report says this was kept a secret from his own army.

Tariq Aziz told inspectors that "Saddam surprised his generals when he informed them that he had no WMD in December 2002 because his boasting had led many to believe Iraq had hidden capability".

Mr Aziz continued that "Saddam never even suggested to them that he did not have WMD". Even his minister for Scientific Research - a euphemism for weapons detail - told US interrogators that "Saddam never talked openly about bluffing in regard to WMD".

This explains why British and American intelligence did not pick up any doubt that WMD still existed - their absence was a secret known only to Saddam.

Last night in a surprise statement on the report, Mr Bush acknowledged that prewar US claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction were wrong, but insisted he had been right to invade Iraq.

He said the report offered "new information" showing Saddam was manipulating for his own gain the sanctions imposed on him.

The report says that more information is still to come. Before being published, it found 20,000 boxes of fresh information - equivalent to all the documents it gathered over the last two years.

We didn't find any Weapons of Mass Destruction, but what we did find was even more shocking, as it fully changes the worldwide diplomatic landscape. As uncorrupt diplomats and champions of justice being to fully comprehend the scale of the scandal, I predict we will see a shift in international public opinion away from Paris and towards London.

Update: Here's a big hat-tip to Bonnie. Funny how great minds think alike, I actually hadn't read her blog in a few days, only to go and read it- and find she used the exact same article Yesterday. It's a great article.

2004-10-08T08:40:00.000-04:00

French President Jacque Chirac: "US Cultural Hegemony a Threat to the World"

I think it's time for the political leadership in the US to rebuke this French bastard!

From the Drudge Report...

French President Jacques Chirac warned Thursday of a "catastrophe" for global diversity if the United States' cultural hegemony goes unchallenged.

Speaking at a French cultural center in Hanoi ahead of Friday's opening of a summit of European and Asian leaders, Chirac said France was right to stand up for cultural and linguistic diversity.

The outspoken French president warned that the world's different cultures could be "choked" by US values.

This, he said, would lead to a "general world sub-culture" based around the English language, which would be "a real ecological catastrophe".

Citing Hollywood's stranglehold over the film industry as an example, Chirac stressed that only with government assistance could countries maintain their cultural heritage.

Vietnam is a former French colony, but only around 375,000 of its 81 million people speak French. English is considered by most people a far more valuable and practical second language, particularly among businessmen.

How clear does it have to be to people in the US that France is NOT a US Ally?

When the people of France elect leaders who rebuke the culture of the United States, make condescending comments about the English language, label the US as an oppressive hegemony, and who laud the enemies of the US for their ability to kill US Forces- they are NOT our friends and allies. As such, it's about time we start looking at them as a country more akin to South Africa than to the United Kingdom; a fine-enough country, just not at all a US ally.

FUCK the French. The US can do without pandering to those arrogant bastards!

Update: Hat tip, Hoodlumman. :-)

2004-10-06T01:08:00.000-04:00

The Best Sound Bite of the Vice Presidential Debate

I watched tonights debate enthusiastically and feel that Cheney solidly won the debate. He was on target, sharp as a razor and cool as a cucumber, while Edwards was on the defensive, backpedaling, and was shaken by the confrontation.

Here's my favorite part of tonights debate, with the best sound bite (very subtle) highlighted in bold...

Edwards: You know, we‘ve taken 90 percent of the coalition causalities. American taxpayers have borne 90 percent of the costs of the effort in Iraq.

And we see the result of there not being a coalition: The first Gulf war cost America $5 billion. We‘re at $200 billion and counting.

John Kerry will never give up control over the security of the United States of America to any other country. We will not outsource our responsibility to keep this country safe.

IFILL: Mr. Vice President, you have 90 seconds to respond.

CHENEY: Well, Gwen, the 90 percent figure is just dead wrong. When you include the Iraqi security forces that have suffered casualties, as well as the allies, they‘ve taken almost 50 percent of the casualties in operations in Iraq, which leaves the U.S. with 50 percent, not 90 percent.

With respect to the cost, it wasn‘t $200 billion.
You probably weren‘t there to vote for that.
But $120 billion is, in fact, what has been allocated to Iraq. The rest of it‘s for Afghanistan and the global war on terror.

Damn that was subtle, and summed up the Senatorial career of John Edwards succinctly.

Another favorite from Cheney...

Your hometown newspaper has taken to calling you “Senator Gone.”

Damn Cheney is good!

2004-10-04T23:24:00.000-04:00

General Political Musings

This post was inspired by this post from Instapundit. Reynolds quote sums up my thoughts exactly on a couple of different political issues.

Personally, I'd be delighted to live in a country where happily married gay couples had closets full of assault weapons.

It inspired me to enumerate my own stance on some issues that come to mind.

Free Speech- I think people should be able to say what they want to, outside of slanderous or scurillous comments. I think that art and satire should be free to express any concept, even those which may be slanderous and scurillous as long as the "speaking" party makes their satire clear to the casual audience.

Gun Rights- I think citizens who pass background checks, and who are free of a criminal past, should have the rights to arm themselves as they see fit with small arms of any type. I'd draw the line at heavy barreled fully automatic weapons. I think that people should be able to easily obtained concealed carry permits, and that they should be free to use justifiable source against those who levy threat of force against them. I feel that if, after a police investigation, a person is found to have used justifiable force in their self-defense- they should be immune to civil prosecution from their assailant or their assailants next-of-kin. Likewise, I feel that firearms manufacturers should be immune to civil prosecution after their product has left their companies control.

Police- I think there should be local civilian governmental oversight of police misconduct proceedings. I think that if a police officer is found guilty of police misconduct, it should equate to a demotion within their organization, and forfeiture of 10 years seniority and acruement of retirement benefits. I'm in favor of a two-strike law for police. If a police officer is found guilty of police misconduct a second time they should be fired and prosecuted for their misconduct, in addition to forfeiture of their benefits.

Military- I'd like to see base pay for enlisted men increased to make their wages commensurate with the US per capita income; which for 2003 was $31,500. I'd like to see wage based entirely on rank, and I'd like to close the wage gap between the lowest enlistees and highest paid among the Pentagons Ivory Tower. For too long, those who work too hard, have been paid too little. It's long overdue that we give better wages and benefits to the men and women of our armed forces.

I'd also like to see the citizenship rules changed for those foreign born who wish to serve amongst our fighting forces. I feel that anyone who serves for 4 years should be granted US citizenship. The least that we can do for their service is grant them the rights and privileges that too many in our country take for granted.

Foreign Policy- The United States should not engage in armed conflict with a foreign nation unless we are sure they pose a threat to the United States. To that end, we must ensure that we have the best equiped and most highly trained intelligence agencies in the world, so our total knowledge can be full enough to know the capabilities of those nations who we find do wish us harm.

...Thats all for now, I'll try to post more later. This is a good exercise for me to express my feelings on these issues, which I talk about far too little these days...

2004-10-02T14:22:00.000-04:00

French Prime Minister: "The Iraqi Insurgents Are Our Best Allies"

I am aghast at the nerve of this French Scoundrel. Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, while giving an interview to the press group "le Figaro" made the following comment about the insurgents operating against US and coalition forces in Iraq...

"The Iraqi insurgents are our best allies."

This is mentioned only very briefly in this New York Post article.

Sadly, my search for more information about this quotes proved fruitless. Hopefully another news organization will be able to pick up on this.

Coupled with this story from the New York Times, which covers the emerging scandal of the UN Oil for Food Program- it's becoming more and more clear that our Old European Allies may actually be our enemies.

2004-10-01T09:56:00.000-04:00

Kerry's Debate Flip-Flops

I watched the debates last night and I'm STILL really confused about where Kerry is on the whole Iraq issue...

Jan 23, 2003: "Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real..." - John Kerry

April 27, 2004: "George Bush sold us on going to war with Iraq based on the threat of weapons of mass destruction. But we still haven't found them. ... We were misled about weapons of mass destruction." - John Kerry (he was privy to the same intelligence information as President Bush, but he spins the issue to make it look like Bush lied to everyone, rather than the world intelligence apparatuses miscalculated the WMD threat in Iraq)

July 26, 2004: "You don't value families if you force them to take up a collection to buy body armor for a son or daughter in the service." (He said this after he voted against the $87 Billion dollar supplement to re-equip the US forces in Iraq, to buy our troops things like body armor...)

Aug 9, 2004: Bush challenged Kerry to answer whether he would support the war "knowing what we know now" about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction that U.S. and British officials were certain were there. In response, Kerry said: "Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for a president to have." but then on...

September 6, 2004: Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry on Monday called the invasion of Iraq "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time" and said his goal was to withdraw U.S. troops in a first White House term. Kerry said this even though earlier he said...

Sep 14, 2003: “I don’t think any United States senator is going to abandon our troops and recklessly leave Iraq to – to whatever follows as a result of simply cutting and running. That’s irresponsible. What is responsible is for the administration to do this properly now.”

During last nights debate, Kerry said the following- much of what CONFLICTS with what he said above...

"I've never wavered in my life.

I know exactly what we need to do in Iraq, and my position has been consistent: Saddam Hussein is a threat. He needed to be disarmed. We needed to go to the U.N. The president needed the authority to use force in order to be able to get him to do something, because he never did it without the threat of force."

("the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time." versus "Saddam Hussein is a threat, he needed to be disarmed." ...Sounds like wavering to me...)

"we also have to be smart, Jim. And smart means not diverting your attention from the real war on terror in Afghanistan against Usama bin Laden and taking if off to Iraq where the 9/11 Commission confirms there was no connection to 9/11 itself and Saddam Hussein, and where the reason for going to war was weapons of mass destruction, not the removal of Saddam Hussein.

This president has made, I regret to say, a colossal error of judgment. And judgment is what we look for in the president of the United States of America."

Wait a second... he says Bush made a colossal error of judgement but, previously, when challenged by Bush about whether he would have voted to grant the President the power to invade Iraq even knowing that there were no WMDs, Kerry said, "Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for a president to have."

Hmm... he's wavering, he's flip-flopping, he's trying to have the best of both worlds. He's trying to look good to the anti-war crowd, and the pro-war crowd, and he can't do it without contradicting himself.

2004-09-28T08:21:00.000-04:00

Pandemic Watch

More than the threats of terrorism or nuclear attack, the potential threat of an Avian Flu Pandemic is the greatest danger to mankind.

Humans have no natural resistance to the so-called Avian Flu, as in the past it has only threatened birds, but people have begun to catch the disease, and this case in Thailand is likely the first human-to-human case of transmission. The disease has a very high mortality rate, much greater than normal strains of flu, and as such is quite deadly; especially to the elderly and to children.

Once the World Health Organization and the US CDC can determine communicability of this strain, we'll have a much greater understanding of which scenario to predict.

If this strain has a communicability of 50% or greater, than we are looking at a possible pandemic situation developing as a result of this disease.

For more information on the Avian Flu, check out the CDC entries--> here.

2004-09-24T11:37:00.000-04:00

Ra^thergate's Mary Mapes: Posterchild for Liberal Media Bias

In late 2001 the US Bureau of Prisons sent a warning letter to CBS Producer Mary Mapes. Mapes, who was working on a story about the Okalahoma City bombings, made a verbal agreement with the head of a White-Supremacist Bank-Robbery gang to help pass confidential information along to another Federal prisoner. She agreed to subvert the law, and violate agreements she had made with the Bureau of Prisons, to act as a secret information broker between Peter Langan and another unnamed prisoner- possibly associated with the Terry Nichols case, where Langan was to be called as a witness.

Here is the brunt of the letter from the US Bureau of Prisons, to CBS Producer Mapes...

Recently, an investigation determined that the above named inmate requested your assistance in circumventing Federal Bureau of Prisons mail procedures. Specifically, inmate Langan requested your cooperation in mailing information intended for another inmate... Phone monitoring reveals that you agreed to this request...

If inmates are permitted to send unmonitored messages between prisons, they could pass information that poses a threat to the security and good order of the various facilities and could have facilitated possible criminal activity...

Therefore, your telephone call and visiting privileges are revoked. In addition your special mail privileges are revoked... If you continue to attempt to circumvent our security procedures in any manner, I will be forced to take additional steps to ensure the security of this facility, which may include referring your actions to the appropriate law enforcement authorities.

This type of behavior indicates that Mary Mapes feels she is above the law. This helps to characterize her as someone so ruthless, she is willing to do anything- no matter how vile- to complete a story. Hat Tip, Susanna Cornett.

If you couple Mary Mapes' total lack of journalistic ethics from the Rathergate Scandal, add her willingness to ignore Federal Law- as above, and also add that she zealously opposes the Presidency of George W. Bush- you get a very clear understanding of the type of journalist Mary Mapes is.

Mary Mapes is the Posterchild for Liberal Media Bias.

Still, no one should forget Dan Rather's and Joe Lockhart's roles in this Latest Leftist debacLe.